12 ms·

The Toxic Grind

61 points by bndr 4y ago

fullshark 4y ago
There are some things that are zero sum or reasonably approximated by a zero sum game, and they are increasingly the tickets to multigenerational prosperity, namely real estate, promotions, job offers, and college admission slots. If you are a start up, your market can realistically only support X companies each getting a piece of the pie. I contend that the rat race exists not because of collective delusion but because of basic economics.
- kaudby 4y ago
  I agree. For me, it comes from a place of negative emotions (like the article explained). I want: 1. to have a family 2. to provide security for my family 3. to provide a reasonable education/upbringing for my family All of these things are becoming more expensive if you take the traditional route.
  - czbond 4y ago
    we'll have a large recession - which will knock prices back down. The Fed has prevented this from happening but have to let the air out soon - but they have to make it look like it isn't their fault. (Cue gas prices)
    - hevomad 4y ago
      take ur pills
      - czbond 4y ago
        You think it was coincidence numerous members of the Fed Reserve resigned ~6 months ago? They need to not be associated with the policies - and the Fed Reserve,as a private entity, knows that it needs alternate reasons / methods for a recession. Blame must always be passed in government. The easiest way to go into recession naturally - is bond market routs and high gas prices. The Fed is aware that in today's 'cancel culture' a lot of public outcry that finally realizes the Fed's activities weaken it's future if political will becomes too strong. Thus it needs something to 'point to' for those whose brains freeze up when 'numbers' are involved.
- dislikedtom 4y ago
  >I contend that the rat race exists not because of collective delusion but because of basic economics. I think it's a combination of delusion and basic economics, with a huge pinch of cultural heritage.
- alexashka 4y ago
  Basic economics is that we have had enough to go around for a while now. What you're describing is modern day insanity.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Also greed. For more and more people, "enough" is never enough. This is reflected in the increasing sense of FOMO in some circles and appeals to greed like the "have fun staying poor" meme in crypto. It's telling that conservative groups that rail against the sins of lust, gluttony, sloth, and envy usually leave out pride, greed, and wrath.
- dstola 4y ago
  > multigenerational prosperity With a lot of young people opting out of having kids and trying to find their own way in life, it would make sense that the anti-work and anti-hustler culture is much more prevalent in younger people (millenials being first). Its a generational shift first of all driven by oncoming climate disaster due to over population and will be felt through wars and hungers. Why should young people contribute to such a society and create more suffering in the process. I am not an anti-natalist, but if we start talking multi-generational that's what it comes down to
- michaelt 4y ago
  > There are some things that are zero sum or reasonably approximated by a zero sum game [...] promotions, job offers Almost everyone in the tech industry is constantly bemoaning how many open many open positions they have and how hard it is to hire people. Doesn't seem very zero-sum to me - unless you want to become CTO at Facebook or something.
  - fullshark 4y ago
    It is true over a longer horizon, you lose that job opportunity to a better employee they can maybe excel and increase the pie and make it more likely they want to hire you or someone else, but over the short run I think it can be approximated with a zero sum game, there's one job opportunity (that you covet) and your victory comes at your competitors' expense and vice versa. This may be less clear in tech and for us cause the boom times have been very good, but imagine a scenario like the big company in your small town is hiring, and that's your path to potentially a steady income. You don't know when they are hiring again, and your town's opportunities are limited. In any case the idea that there aren't zero sum competitions in life (another example is competing for a certain romantic partner, something I didn't even mention which i realize is implicitly perhaps behind a lot of this among young people) is a myth that a lot of people push because they simply don't like competition and competing I think. Not only are there zero sum or approximately zero sum games in life, they are among the most impactful ones.
citizenpaul 4y ago
I have always loathed this mental illness form of hustle culture. People are starting to wake up to it though. I've seen several social media parody accounts pop up to make fun of the garyV types.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > I have always loathed this mental illness form of hustle culture Do we have to swing the pendulum so far in the opposite direction to be calling it, in all cases, a mental illness?
  - citizenpaul 4y ago
    When the message is that there should be literally no second of your day that is left un-dedicated to improvement and making money. Yes mental illness is a good word for it. If you do that you will become insane and quite literally die. You will also fail at hustling because the vast majority of people are not in physical condition to maintain this level of output.
throwaway9980 4y ago
Hitting my mid-40’s with a reasonably successful multi decade career in tech and I’ve recently realized that some gigantic percentage (plurality, maybe majority) of all the hard work has gone into competing against the people around me for opportunities. Not into actual value creation for others, not in service of others, purely focused on beating out other people for the chances. I’m not sure how to reorient myself. It’s extremely disturbing to look back and think that all the good stuff was a side effect of spending enormous energy trying to outcompete others for opportunity. I don’t want to keep doing things this way, but I also don’t know how to change.
- krembanan 4y ago
  What exactly do you mean by this?
  - strikelaserclaw 4y ago
    A lot of people who are good in a capitalistic world, you know your finance people, lawyers, software engineers (@ FAANG) are kind of like race horses, they are born with ample intellectual capacity and spend their formative years competing with their peers to try to rise to the top (starting from middle school, high school, top uni, top company, top position etc...), they rarely ask themselves if what they are doing is even worth it for humanity, themselves, or posterity, they just run as soon as they are put in a race. Taking a step back and questioning this stuff is scary, especially if you are brought up to think that if you aren't running then you are falling behind.
  - Arainach 4y ago
    >Most people in tech changes jobs after 2 years [[Citation Needed]] This isn't true in the industry at large. To the degree it's true among the HN demographic it's true early in careers. People don't do that forever. If you have a family, you like the stability of a place and don't want to have to spend all of your nights and weekends grinding Leetcode and networking. Once you're in a senior position, it takes time to build the connections and reputation inside a company to be effective, and constantly moving is a disadvantage. Even if you're done being promoted, many people reach a point where they're earning enough to support their lifestyle and have other priorities. I have plenty of friends at companies like Microsoft, Google, and smaller boring companies HN doesn't care about that absolutely could switch jobs for another 20-40% in comp but would have to work twice as many hours a week to do so, and that's a bad trade.
douglaswlance 4y ago
The point of work is to contribute to society. Sustaining your own life is a side-effect, though it is an important one, as it allows you to contribute more to society. Overworking can negatively impact how much you can contribute, so in that sense it should be avoided.
- pbourke 4y ago
  The point of your work is to contribute to society. The point of my work is to sustain my own life.
  - douglaswlance 4y ago
    Can you sustain your own life without society?
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > The point of work is to contribute to society. That seems to assume work has just one purpose. That strikes me as false, in that different persons can have different purposes for doing work. Can you elaborate?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- cholmon 4y ago
  I wager the vast majority of people take the polar opposite view: the point of work is to do what's necessary to survive, ideally to thrive. Contributing to society is nice if it can be managed, but it definitely comes further down the list of "things I need to do" for most folks.
synu 4y ago
I am still not 100% sure if “sigma male grindset” is a joke or not. It seems like one of those things that started as parody, but sincere believers showed up and took it over.
- duxup 4y ago
  I thought the “10x developer” was a joke about how people associate being a jerk with being productive / success / having no time to work as an appropriate human / teammate. I was more than a little horrified when I found people were serious…
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  In my experience, people's motivations and preferred working styles diverge basically as far as you can imagine. I know a guy who was putting in 70 hour weeks on a not-particularly-promising project for his new unfunded startup, and not even in a recreational way - he would specifically decline to hang out or play games with us because he was working.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Meme's seem to exhibit convergent evolution where parody and reality slowly push towards each other until they are indistinguishable.
duxup 4y ago
I put in a new front porch on my house and go for a walk during the work day and then sit outside for a bit with an iced tea. After that I feel like I do better work for the rest of the afternoon. I don’t post on social media much but maybe I should… Perhaps the folks not “hustling” don’t attract or ask for much attention?
chasd00 4y ago
In the bullet list there's "Being “off” and doing other hobbies when not at work." for many people, side hustles are their hobby. Side hustles don't have to be your hobby though.
gammabetadelta 4y ago
The problem with a lot of these posts is that there's a spectrum of people. On one end you have the sigma grind who work all the time and on the other those who don't do anything and complain. Both are toxic in their own ways since accomplishment is so critical to self-worth. Yet, at the same time you have to listen to your body and rest. I find that the happiest people don't read the hustle culture and just focus on their family and are happy with what they have. The problem is some of us can't help but work so we have to accept that grinding is better than self-loathing. For some that's a false dichotomy, for others it is truth. That's sad.
- lumost 4y ago
  as I've gotten older, I've learned that it matters where you invest your "extra capacity". If you invest it in leisure, it's often good for a time - but depressing in the long term, if you invest it in work - you can risk burnout. I'd argue that investing it in any particular area all the time will lead to some form of burnout. The key is to look for where you get the most return on invested energy. There are times where work is a thankless grind that doesn't care if you put in 20 hours or 80. There are times where putting in an extra 5 hours leads to a promotion/accomplishment of note. When you have 40 hours of spare capacity, binging netflix is not going to make you happy in the long term. At the office, expecting everyone to want and be able to put in 60 hours a week is going to be a problem. I did this for my first 3 jobs, and it caused friction with those who are putting in their 30/35. Ultimately, it lead to me burning out and changing jobs rapidly for 5 years - because I wasn't getting out of my job something commensurate with the extra investment I was putting in.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > I find that the happiest people don't read the hustle culture and just focus on their family and are happy with what they have. I think something often missed is you have to learn what makes you happy. I feel like that should be a top priority (and it may very well turn out to be work that makes you happy). If you can figure out what brings you happiness and joy in your life then you can get started maximizing it. I'm 46 and have done enough to look back and identify the happiest moments in my life, derive a pattern, and then work to maximize the chances of more of those moments. For me, it all revolves around relationships either with my kids, wife, family, or friends. Not once do my happiest moments involve a screen or my work so I don't chase those things. I work, and work hard, to provide for myself and family but that has never brought me joy. For me, working and work success is how i pay the bills and that's it.
president 4y ago
It's an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? Union busting, off-shoring, and imported labor are all needed to prop up the system. Pair this with ever-increasing costs of living and you get a collapsing society. But hey, at least you get cheap goods right?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? No. There is no playbook or inevitability playing out. "Late-stage capitalism" is just lazy cynicism by a different meme.
  - president 4y ago
    Well, maybe I should have re-phrased it to "Capitalism with maximizing shareholder value characteristics". Toss human nature on top of that, and you're biased towards "late stage capitalism".
    - czbond 4y ago
      I disagree. My context - I am an ardent, to the core capitalist - but a humane capitalist. I believe in continued failure until success. Letting failure die. Capitalism in it's current form has it's incentives mis-aligned. When aligned correctly, and not solely chasing the highest returns or Internal Rate of Return - capitalism can be the most potent force I feel on Earth. Why? Because it aligns humans incentives (do better, provide more for self & family) with growth.
      - president 4y ago
        Yes, I agree. My criticism is of the current form of capitalism that is so entrenched that we won't ever seem to escape without some kind of forced reset.
        czbond 4y ago
        Totally agree - lawmakers (who are currently attorneys) should be replaced with engineers & company leads need CEO & CFO priority re-alignment, although that is asking a whole lot.
superb-owl 4y ago
After my current gig, I'm going to do everything I can to land a 4-day workweek. https://www.newsweek.com/every-us-company-4-day-workweek-full-list-1697943 https://www.newsweek.com/every-us-company-4-day-workweek-ful...
Havoc 4y ago
I had always interpreted the grind as a bit wider. ie not just work but also say hitting the gym at 6AM would count. Doesn’t make the authors point any less valid though I do think this mindset applied to self improvement is less harmful than pure work
- michaelt 4y ago
  The author does explicitly mention "getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM" so I think he might be on the same page as you.
czbond 4y ago
It's like article author has never watched a nature documentary where gorillas kill other gorillas for territory (or most other species similar). Humans are bell curve like all other species. Nature rewards either strength, physical advantage, or mental advantage.... and there is constant competition. That's just the way it works in human nature.... humans are wired that way. You either participate, don't, or find a different way. Griping about it accomplishes little. The gorilla that is sad he's not a silver back gets his skull crushed.
- chasd00 4y ago
  i don't know why you were downvoted. I mentioned basically the same in another comment, you can't just turn off competition between humans. Competition is a fundamental component of all known life. You can opt out but then complaining that the rest of humanity has not chose to opt out isn't really fair.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    I think the argument is that "grinders" are doing themselves a disservice? I.e. a competitive strategy would be to make your competitors burn out and cheer the chrunch culture while you yourself slack off.
    - czbond 4y ago
      The competitive strategy idea does work - except for there is a singular you/me and endless competition (humans looking to advance themselves)
  - lanstin 4y ago
    Because without cooperation you don’t get the internet, you don’t get compilers, you don’t get HTML on top of C. And humans are strongly biased towards cooperation. Saying everything eats each other is flat wrong about people. Better to understand cooperation and competition as two ends on a continuum of “how to allocate people to solve problems”.
krembanan 4y ago
I've always been confused by this, as most studies show around 5~ hours a day is the maximum your brain can do work that requires deep focus (programming etc). So what are these people doing where they can work 10+ hours days? You will see seriously diminishing (and often negative) results when overworking. You'll end up waking up the next morning cleaning up and fixing bugs from your overworked brain.
- captainbland 4y ago
  A lot of people who claim to be like this seem to tweet a suspiciously large amount.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Or discuss it on Hacker News.
  - cvhashim 4y ago
    Musk for example -_-
- compiler-guy 4y ago
  They aren't deep focusing during the other five hours, they are communicating with the team, holding meetings, planning things and whatever else.
- carimura 4y ago
  that's assuming the day is entirely deep work. it's not. lots of work is shallow work. not that I support grinding down at the expense of health/happiness, but for most people there's an unlimited amount of things that can go into the TODO.
- 121789 4y ago
  I think there's a significant amount of work that only needs to get done rather than needing deep focus, and this is especially true if you have tight deadlines. I know I could pretty easily fill up 10 hours of a working day on average. I just don't want to.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> They don’t say that working on a meaningful mission will make you more fulfilled in life. That doesn’t sell. The idea that you should pursue something you genuinely care about, which has nothing to do with getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM, is not so glamorous. I’m so freaking glad to be out of the rat race. For the record, I spend a significant amount of time, “working.” I use the quotes, because what I do, doesn’t really feel like “work.” It’s a joy. It’s what I always wanted to do. I also get up at 5AM, walk three miles, and “work” until bedtime, seven days a week. No one pays me, and I’m fine with that. There is always a “grind” phase of my “work”; particularly when I approach release (I am in that phase, now, on my main project), but you always need to do that, when you ship anything. I still get great joy from shipping, so the “grind” is worth it. I had to be forced into this position. No one would hire me, so I had to retreat. Thank Cthulhu.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
reminds me of this funny video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
This is disappointing to see on the front page as it's the 600,000th article since 2007 about why family and health are better life priorities than work. As usual the author, who invariably lives in the white collar tech-bubble, and therefore is bombarded with "hustle culture" stuff in their LinkedIn etc...sets up a strawman and then attempts to dismantle it: >This is a universal longing in a capitalist world — getting ahead of others is the holy grail of life. Why else would you be living if not to have more material things than others? I'm pretty well read in philosophy and economics and I have never once ever heard a serious and well considered argument that material wealth accumulation is a normative goal for any system. Someone please point me to a large subset of people or even one serious philosopher who would make this claim. Further, even the hustle culture people (of whom I'm no fan) don't even make this claim. Here, this is what the American people value in life according to Pew: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/11/20/where-americ... Of course every single author of one of these pieces inevitably gives the literal exact same advice on what SHOULD be considered the priorities and wouldn't you know it looks eerily similar to what people self-report as where they find meaning. Yawn. As a community lets promote better stories to the top.
- synu 4y ago
  Did you ever try Clubhouse? It was just endless channels of “get rich with this one simple trick” type stuff. Not a lot of nuance, just cynically preying on people with the “you know you are better than others, pay me to help you reach your potential” types of scams.
- carimura 4y ago
  maybe if it keeps getting upvoted despite being the 600,000th, there's something that continues to resonate with the audience?
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    >The Toxic Grind >They’re not glorifying the process of achieving this wealth, not the journey, just the end result, just pure “Here’s my yacht, bro”. Kind of takes on a whole new meaning for someone growing up in a yachting community who aspires to work closely with chemicals regardless.
the_snooze 4y ago
The way I counter the "grind culture" is to have a more mellow view on things. The "grind" doesn't matter. It's mostly performative for little actual practical value. Rather, it's the small things done consistently over a long period of time that really add up. Working "hard" is neither a small thing, nor is it sustainable over time, so I simply don't do that. Instead, I set my goals and timelines, have my team hold me accountable, use my good working hours to hit those goals with rock-solid reliability, and not force myself to work outside those good hours. There's no need to grind or panic at all, and I have plenty of non-working hours to pursue all the non-work things that matter to me.
- chasd00 4y ago
  having goals (short term and long term), a roadmap to get there, and executing puts you so far ahead of the curve of "hustle culture". All the blog posts, all the videos, all the discussion revolve around goals and meeting them. If you can already do that then you're already there.
photochemsyn 4y ago
I appreciate the idea behind this post, and it's true that chronic overwork is debilitating - but there are a lot of different ways to get things done that don't necessarily conform to the author's ideal conclusion. For me, the 9-5 routine every single week is a toxic grind, with weekends off and all. My preferred work routine covers about the same hourly total, but it's basically three weeks on nonstop, one week off to recuperate and relax and do other things. This is clearly not for everyone, but I think it has some similarities to how our ancestors lived. Say you're a Polar Inuit, and the caribou are migrating. You hunt caribou around the clock, then relax, store the product, take it easy for a while. Say you're a simple farmer, and it's harvest time, or planting time - you work around the clock to bring in the harvest/plant the crop, then take it relatively easy for a while. In the modern world, if you're working on something complicated, there's this 'loading time' factor just to get the situation into your head. If it takes a few hours to get up to speed, and you have to do that every day, it's just wasted time. Get up to speed, work straight through with it all in your head, get some food and sleep, and the next day - you're still up to speed. This is far more productive (for complex work) than the awful 9-5 routine, and weekends surrounded by crowds of people are not that great, either. Much better to have a whole week off afterwards. Where this goes off the rails is when some boss says, no, you don't get that week off, I need you to work like a slave every single week. This is a problem with the hierarchical nature of most modern human societies, and typically said boss is out at 2:00 every day for that important golf game where the important deals are made and the important cocktails are drunk, can't miss that. The construction boss who shows up at the site to 'oversee' for an hour or two is the classic example of this. In our current society, the only real option for this kind of approach appears to be self-employment, which has a whole other set of problems.
- em-bee 4y ago
  work straight through with it all in your head, get some food and sleep doesn't work if you have family. there are other ways to get up to speed faster. for me it is the layout of windows on my computer. as long as everything is exactly the way i left it the day before, and there are no other concerns i need to deal with. then i can get back into it quickly. that's why i really hate turning off my computer, and i'd like the idea of computers permanently keeping state, so i don't have to worry about keeping it running.
trentnix 4y ago
A lot of people are working lots of hours but their output doesn't match their effort. They "work" 12 hour days and only provide some fraction of that in real value due to distraction and procrastination and whatever else they sink their time into. But chaining yourself to a desk for 12 hours and complaining is a lot easier than developing the discipline and focus to put in a solid day's effort.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  There are plenty of jobs that don't need to exist at all. No amount of discipline and focus will turn a bullshit job[1] into one that contributes something meaningful. Perhaps we need to normalize working less so the burden/gift of "real" jobs can be split more evenly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Bullshit Jobs exist because we've set up society so that people need to work in order to "earn" their life. If everyone's needs were suddenly met, and work was optional, these jobs would vanish overnight. The world has far, far, FAR more productive capacity than actual problems needing to be solved, but since everyone has to do something to make money, we dig holes for someone to fill them in, create checkboxes so someone can check them. "We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller
vorpalhex 4y ago
This is a case of fighting strawmen. Nobody is actually promoting to work from when you wake till late at night to make a dollar. Even if you go fully into hustle culture the goal isn't to drink on a yacht - it's to accomplish important self goals like writing a screen play or publishing a book.

61 points by bndr 4y ago

There are some things that are zero sum or reasonably approximated by a zero sum game, and they are increasingly the tickets to multigenerational prosperity, namely real estate, promotions, job offers, and college admission slots. If you are a start up, your market can realistically only support X companies each getting a piece of the pie. I contend that the rat race exists not because of collective delusion but because of basic economics.

kaudby 4y ago
I agree. For me, it comes from a place of negative emotions (like the article explained). I want: 1. to have a family 2. to provide security for my family 3. to provide a reasonable education/upbringing for my family All of these things are becoming more expensive if you take the traditional route.
- czbond 4y ago
  we'll have a large recession - which will knock prices back down. The Fed has prevented this from happening but have to let the air out soon - but they have to make it look like it isn't their fault. (Cue gas prices)
  - hevomad 4y ago
    take ur pills
    - czbond 4y ago
      You think it was coincidence numerous members of the Fed Reserve resigned ~6 months ago? They need to not be associated with the policies - and the Fed Reserve,as a private entity, knows that it needs alternate reasons / methods for a recession. Blame must always be passed in government. The easiest way to go into recession naturally - is bond market routs and high gas prices. The Fed is aware that in today's 'cancel culture' a lot of public outcry that finally realizes the Fed's activities weaken it's future if political will becomes too strong. Thus it needs something to 'point to' for those whose brains freeze up when 'numbers' are involved.
dislikedtom 4y ago
>I contend that the rat race exists not because of collective delusion but because of basic economics. I think it's a combination of delusion and basic economics, with a huge pinch of cultural heritage.
alexashka 4y ago
Basic economics is that we have had enough to go around for a while now. What you're describing is modern day insanity.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Also greed. For more and more people, "enough" is never enough. This is reflected in the increasing sense of FOMO in some circles and appeals to greed like the "have fun staying poor" meme in crypto. It's telling that conservative groups that rail against the sins of lust, gluttony, sloth, and envy usually leave out pride, greed, and wrath.
dstola 4y ago
> multigenerational prosperity With a lot of young people opting out of having kids and trying to find their own way in life, it would make sense that the anti-work and anti-hustler culture is much more prevalent in younger people (millenials being first). Its a generational shift first of all driven by oncoming climate disaster due to over population and will be felt through wars and hungers. Why should young people contribute to such a society and create more suffering in the process. I am not an anti-natalist, but if we start talking multi-generational that's what it comes down to
michaelt 4y ago
> There are some things that are zero sum or reasonably approximated by a zero sum game [...] promotions, job offers Almost everyone in the tech industry is constantly bemoaning how many open many open positions they have and how hard it is to hire people. Doesn't seem very zero-sum to me - unless you want to become CTO at Facebook or something.
- fullshark 4y ago
  It is true over a longer horizon, you lose that job opportunity to a better employee they can maybe excel and increase the pie and make it more likely they want to hire you or someone else, but over the short run I think it can be approximated with a zero sum game, there's one job opportunity (that you covet) and your victory comes at your competitors' expense and vice versa. This may be less clear in tech and for us cause the boom times have been very good, but imagine a scenario like the big company in your small town is hiring, and that's your path to potentially a steady income. You don't know when they are hiring again, and your town's opportunities are limited. In any case the idea that there aren't zero sum competitions in life (another example is competing for a certain romantic partner, something I didn't even mention which i realize is implicitly perhaps behind a lot of this among young people) is a myth that a lot of people push because they simply don't like competition and competing I think. Not only are there zero sum or approximately zero sum games in life, they are among the most impactful ones.

citizenpaul 4y ago

I have always loathed this mental illness form of hustle culture. People are starting to wake up to it though. I've seen several social media parody accounts pop up to make fun of the garyV types.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> I have always loathed this mental illness form of hustle culture Do we have to swing the pendulum so far in the opposite direction to be calling it, in all cases, a mental illness?
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  When the message is that there should be literally no second of your day that is left un-dedicated to improvement and making money. Yes mental illness is a good word for it. If you do that you will become insane and quite literally die. You will also fail at hustling because the vast majority of people are not in physical condition to maintain this level of output.

throwaway9980 4y ago

Hitting my mid-40’s with a reasonably successful multi decade career in tech and I’ve recently realized that some gigantic percentage (plurality, maybe majority) of all the hard work has gone into competing against the people around me for opportunities. Not into actual value creation for others, not in service of others, purely focused on beating out other people for the chances. I’m not sure how to reorient myself. It’s extremely disturbing to look back and think that all the good stuff was a side effect of spending enormous energy trying to outcompete others for opportunity. I don’t want to keep doing things this way, but I also don’t know how to change.

krembanan 4y ago
What exactly do you mean by this?
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  A lot of people who are good in a capitalistic world, you know your finance people, lawyers, software engineers (@ FAANG) are kind of like race horses, they are born with ample intellectual capacity and spend their formative years competing with their peers to try to rise to the top (starting from middle school, high school, top uni, top company, top position etc...), they rarely ask themselves if what they are doing is even worth it for humanity, themselves, or posterity, they just run as soon as they are put in a race. Taking a step back and questioning this stuff is scary, especially if you are brought up to think that if you aren't running then you are falling behind.
- Arainach 4y ago
  >Most people in tech changes jobs after 2 years [[Citation Needed]] This isn't true in the industry at large. To the degree it's true among the HN demographic it's true early in careers. People don't do that forever. If you have a family, you like the stability of a place and don't want to have to spend all of your nights and weekends grinding Leetcode and networking. Once you're in a senior position, it takes time to build the connections and reputation inside a company to be effective, and constantly moving is a disadvantage. Even if you're done being promoted, many people reach a point where they're earning enough to support their lifestyle and have other priorities. I have plenty of friends at companies like Microsoft, Google, and smaller boring companies HN doesn't care about that absolutely could switch jobs for another 20-40% in comp but would have to work twice as many hours a week to do so, and that's a bad trade.

douglaswlance 4y ago

The point of work is to contribute to society. Sustaining your own life is a side-effect, though it is an important one, as it allows you to contribute more to society. Overworking can negatively impact how much you can contribute, so in that sense it should be avoided.

pbourke 4y ago
The point of your work is to contribute to society. The point of my work is to sustain my own life.
- douglaswlance 4y ago
  Can you sustain your own life without society?
CoastalCoder 4y ago
> The point of work is to contribute to society. That seems to assume work has just one purpose. That strikes me as false, in that different persons can have different purposes for doing work. Can you elaborate?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
cholmon 4y ago
I wager the vast majority of people take the polar opposite view: the point of work is to do what's necessary to survive, ideally to thrive. Contributing to society is nice if it can be managed, but it definitely comes further down the list of "things I need to do" for most folks.

synu 4y ago

I am still not 100% sure if “sigma male grindset” is a joke or not. It seems like one of those things that started as parody, but sincere believers showed up and took it over.

duxup 4y ago
I thought the “10x developer” was a joke about how people associate being a jerk with being productive / success / having no time to work as an appropriate human / teammate. I was more than a little horrified when I found people were serious…
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
In my experience, people's motivations and preferred working styles diverge basically as far as you can imagine. I know a guy who was putting in 70 hour weeks on a not-particularly-promising project for his new unfunded startup, and not even in a recreational way - he would specifically decline to hang out or play games with us because he was working.
AlexandrB 4y ago
Meme's seem to exhibit convergent evolution where parody and reality slowly push towards each other until they are indistinguishable.

duxup 4y ago

I put in a new front porch on my house and go for a walk during the work day and then sit outside for a bit with an iced tea. After that I feel like I do better work for the rest of the afternoon. I don’t post on social media much but maybe I should… Perhaps the folks not “hustling” don’t attract or ask for much attention?

chasd00 4y ago

In the bullet list there's "Being “off” and doing other hobbies when not at work." for many people, side hustles are their hobby. Side hustles don't have to be your hobby though.

gammabetadelta 4y ago

The problem with a lot of these posts is that there's a spectrum of people. On one end you have the sigma grind who work all the time and on the other those who don't do anything and complain. Both are toxic in their own ways since accomplishment is so critical to self-worth. Yet, at the same time you have to listen to your body and rest. I find that the happiest people don't read the hustle culture and just focus on their family and are happy with what they have. The problem is some of us can't help but work so we have to accept that grinding is better than self-loathing. For some that's a false dichotomy, for others it is truth. That's sad.

lumost 4y ago
as I've gotten older, I've learned that it matters where you invest your "extra capacity". If you invest it in leisure, it's often good for a time - but depressing in the long term, if you invest it in work - you can risk burnout. I'd argue that investing it in any particular area all the time will lead to some form of burnout. The key is to look for where you get the most return on invested energy. There are times where work is a thankless grind that doesn't care if you put in 20 hours or 80. There are times where putting in an extra 5 hours leads to a promotion/accomplishment of note. When you have 40 hours of spare capacity, binging netflix is not going to make you happy in the long term. At the office, expecting everyone to want and be able to put in 60 hours a week is going to be a problem. I did this for my first 3 jobs, and it caused friction with those who are putting in their 30/35. Ultimately, it lead to me burning out and changing jobs rapidly for 5 years - because I wasn't getting out of my job something commensurate with the extra investment I was putting in.
chasd00 4y ago
> I find that the happiest people don't read the hustle culture and just focus on their family and are happy with what they have. I think something often missed is you have to learn what makes you happy. I feel like that should be a top priority (and it may very well turn out to be work that makes you happy). If you can figure out what brings you happiness and joy in your life then you can get started maximizing it. I'm 46 and have done enough to look back and identify the happiest moments in my life, derive a pattern, and then work to maximize the chances of more of those moments. For me, it all revolves around relationships either with my kids, wife, family, or friends. Not once do my happiest moments involve a screen or my work so I don't chase those things. I work, and work hard, to provide for myself and family but that has never brought me joy. For me, working and work success is how i pay the bills and that's it.

president 4y ago

It's an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? Union busting, off-shoring, and imported labor are all needed to prop up the system. Pair this with ever-increasing costs of living and you get a collapsing society. But hey, at least you get cheap goods right?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? No. There is no playbook or inevitability playing out. "Late-stage capitalism" is just lazy cynicism by a different meme.
- president 4y ago
  Well, maybe I should have re-phrased it to "Capitalism with maximizing shareholder value characteristics". Toss human nature on top of that, and you're biased towards "late stage capitalism".
  - czbond 4y ago
    I disagree. My context - I am an ardent, to the core capitalist - but a humane capitalist. I believe in continued failure until success. Letting failure die. Capitalism in it's current form has it's incentives mis-aligned. When aligned correctly, and not solely chasing the highest returns or Internal Rate of Return - capitalism can be the most potent force I feel on Earth. Why? Because it aligns humans incentives (do better, provide more for self & family) with growth.
    - president 4y ago
      Yes, I agree. My criticism is of the current form of capitalism that is so entrenched that we won't ever seem to escape without some kind of forced reset.
      - czbond 4y ago
        Totally agree - lawmakers (who are currently attorneys) should be replaced with engineers & company leads need CEO & CFO priority re-alignment, although that is asking a whole lot.

superb-owl 4y ago

After my current gig, I'm going to do everything I can to land a 4-day workweek. https://www.newsweek.com/every-us-company-4-day-workweek-full-list-1697943 https://www.newsweek.com/every-us-company-4-day-workweek-ful...

Havoc 4y ago

I had always interpreted the grind as a bit wider. ie not just work but also say hitting the gym at 6AM would count. Doesn’t make the authors point any less valid though I do think this mindset applied to self improvement is less harmful than pure work

michaelt 4y ago
The author does explicitly mention "getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM" so I think he might be on the same page as you.

czbond 4y ago

It's like article author has never watched a nature documentary where gorillas kill other gorillas for territory (or most other species similar). Humans are bell curve like all other species. Nature rewards either strength, physical advantage, or mental advantage.... and there is constant competition. That's just the way it works in human nature.... humans are wired that way. You either participate, don't, or find a different way. Griping about it accomplishes little. The gorilla that is sad he's not a silver back gets his skull crushed.

chasd00 4y ago
i don't know why you were downvoted. I mentioned basically the same in another comment, you can't just turn off competition between humans. Competition is a fundamental component of all known life. You can opt out but then complaining that the rest of humanity has not chose to opt out isn't really fair.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I think the argument is that "grinders" are doing themselves a disservice? I.e. a competitive strategy would be to make your competitors burn out and cheer the chrunch culture while you yourself slack off.
  - czbond 4y ago
    The competitive strategy idea does work - except for there is a singular you/me and endless competition (humans looking to advance themselves)
- lanstin 4y ago
  Because without cooperation you don’t get the internet, you don’t get compilers, you don’t get HTML on top of C. And humans are strongly biased towards cooperation. Saying everything eats each other is flat wrong about people. Better to understand cooperation and competition as two ends on a continuum of “how to allocate people to solve problems”.

krembanan 4y ago

I've always been confused by this, as most studies show around 5~ hours a day is the maximum your brain can do work that requires deep focus (programming etc). So what are these people doing where they can work 10+ hours days? You will see seriously diminishing (and often negative) results when overworking. You'll end up waking up the next morning cleaning up and fixing bugs from your overworked brain.

captainbland 4y ago
A lot of people who claim to be like this seem to tweet a suspiciously large amount.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Or discuss it on Hacker News.
- cvhashim 4y ago
  Musk for example -_-
compiler-guy 4y ago
They aren't deep focusing during the other five hours, they are communicating with the team, holding meetings, planning things and whatever else.
carimura 4y ago
that's assuming the day is entirely deep work. it's not. lots of work is shallow work. not that I support grinding down at the expense of health/happiness, but for most people there's an unlimited amount of things that can go into the TODO.
121789 4y ago
I think there's a significant amount of work that only needs to get done rather than needing deep focus, and this is especially true if you have tight deadlines. I know I could pretty easily fill up 10 hours of a working day on average. I just don't want to.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> They don’t say that working on a meaningful mission will make you more fulfilled in life. That doesn’t sell. The idea that you should pursue something you genuinely care about, which has nothing to do with getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM, is not so glamorous. I’m so freaking glad to be out of the rat race. For the record, I spend a significant amount of time, “working.” I use the quotes, because what I do, doesn’t really feel like “work.” It’s a joy. It’s what I always wanted to do. I also get up at 5AM, walk three miles, and “work” until bedtime, seven days a week. No one pays me, and I’m fine with that. There is always a “grind” phase of my “work”; particularly when I approach release (I am in that phase, now, on my main project), but you always need to do that, when you ship anything. I still get great joy from shipping, so the “grind” is worth it. I had to be forced into this position. No one would hire me, so I had to retreat. Thank Cthulhu.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

reminds me of this funny video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

This is disappointing to see on the front page as it's the 600,000th article since 2007 about why family and health are better life priorities than work. As usual the author, who invariably lives in the white collar tech-bubble, and therefore is bombarded with "hustle culture" stuff in their LinkedIn etc...sets up a strawman and then attempts to dismantle it: >This is a universal longing in a capitalist world — getting ahead of others is the holy grail of life. Why else would you be living if not to have more material things than others? I'm pretty well read in philosophy and economics and I have never once ever heard a serious and well considered argument that material wealth accumulation is a normative goal for any system. Someone please point me to a large subset of people or even one serious philosopher who would make this claim. Further, even the hustle culture people (of whom I'm no fan) don't even make this claim. Here, this is what the American people value in life according to Pew: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/11/20/where-americ... Of course every single author of one of these pieces inevitably gives the literal exact same advice on what SHOULD be considered the priorities and wouldn't you know it looks eerily similar to what people self-report as where they find meaning. Yawn. As a community lets promote better stories to the top.

synu 4y ago
Did you ever try Clubhouse? It was just endless channels of “get rich with this one simple trick” type stuff. Not a lot of nuance, just cynically preying on people with the “you know you are better than others, pay me to help you reach your potential” types of scams.
carimura 4y ago
maybe if it keeps getting upvoted despite being the 600,000th, there's something that continues to resonate with the audience?
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  >The Toxic Grind >They’re not glorifying the process of achieving this wealth, not the journey, just the end result, just pure “Here’s my yacht, bro”. Kind of takes on a whole new meaning for someone growing up in a yachting community who aspires to work closely with chemicals regardless.

the_snooze 4y ago

The way I counter the "grind culture" is to have a more mellow view on things. The "grind" doesn't matter. It's mostly performative for little actual practical value. Rather, it's the small things done consistently over a long period of time that really add up. Working "hard" is neither a small thing, nor is it sustainable over time, so I simply don't do that. Instead, I set my goals and timelines, have my team hold me accountable, use my good working hours to hit those goals with rock-solid reliability, and not force myself to work outside those good hours. There's no need to grind or panic at all, and I have plenty of non-working hours to pursue all the non-work things that matter to me.

chasd00 4y ago
having goals (short term and long term), a roadmap to get there, and executing puts you so far ahead of the curve of "hustle culture". All the blog posts, all the videos, all the discussion revolve around goals and meeting them. If you can already do that then you're already there.

photochemsyn 4y ago

I appreciate the idea behind this post, and it's true that chronic overwork is debilitating - but there are a lot of different ways to get things done that don't necessarily conform to the author's ideal conclusion. For me, the 9-5 routine every single week is a toxic grind, with weekends off and all. My preferred work routine covers about the same hourly total, but it's basically three weeks on nonstop, one week off to recuperate and relax and do other things. This is clearly not for everyone, but I think it has some similarities to how our ancestors lived. Say you're a Polar Inuit, and the caribou are migrating. You hunt caribou around the clock, then relax, store the product, take it easy for a while. Say you're a simple farmer, and it's harvest time, or planting time - you work around the clock to bring in the harvest/plant the crop, then take it relatively easy for a while. In the modern world, if you're working on something complicated, there's this 'loading time' factor just to get the situation into your head. If it takes a few hours to get up to speed, and you have to do that every day, it's just wasted time. Get up to speed, work straight through with it all in your head, get some food and sleep, and the next day - you're still up to speed. This is far more productive (for complex work) than the awful 9-5 routine, and weekends surrounded by crowds of people are not that great, either. Much better to have a whole week off afterwards. Where this goes off the rails is when some boss says, no, you don't get that week off, I need you to work like a slave every single week. This is a problem with the hierarchical nature of most modern human societies, and typically said boss is out at 2:00 every day for that important golf game where the important deals are made and the important cocktails are drunk, can't miss that. The construction boss who shows up at the site to 'oversee' for an hour or two is the classic example of this. In our current society, the only real option for this kind of approach appears to be self-employment, which has a whole other set of problems.

em-bee 4y ago
work straight through with it all in your head, get some food and sleep doesn't work if you have family. there are other ways to get up to speed faster. for me it is the layout of windows on my computer. as long as everything is exactly the way i left it the day before, and there are no other concerns i need to deal with. then i can get back into it quickly. that's why i really hate turning off my computer, and i'd like the idea of computers permanently keeping state, so i don't have to worry about keeping it running.

trentnix 4y ago

A lot of people are working lots of hours but their output doesn't match their effort. They "work" 12 hour days and only provide some fraction of that in real value due to distraction and procrastination and whatever else they sink their time into. But chaining yourself to a desk for 12 hours and complaining is a lot easier than developing the discipline and focus to put in a solid day's effort.

AlexandrB 4y ago
There are plenty of jobs that don't need to exist at all. No amount of discipline and focus will turn a bullshit job[1] into one that contributes something meaningful. Perhaps we need to normalize working less so the burden/gift of "real" jobs can be split more evenly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Bullshit Jobs exist because we've set up society so that people need to work in order to "earn" their life. If everyone's needs were suddenly met, and work was optional, these jobs would vanish overnight. The world has far, far, FAR more productive capacity than actual problems needing to be solved, but since everyone has to do something to make money, we dig holes for someone to fill them in, create checkboxes so someone can check them. "We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller

vorpalhex 4y ago

This is a case of fighting strawmen. Nobody is actually promoting to work from when you wake till late at night to make a dollar. Even if you go fully into hustle culture the goal isn't to drink on a yacht - it's to accomplish important self goals like writing a screen play or publishing a book.