Originally published at: Can we put hustle culture to rest? | Boing Boing
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Well, for the sake of “the company” really… enriching the elite class at the expense of the health and well-being of the rest of us…
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Maybe this is just a secular version of the prosperity gospel.
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I think it’s dying. Certainly the Great Resignation of the past year has left employers scrambling to try and figure out what employees want (more money; more time with family; less WORK… duh). I think we are on the cusp of a real change in our relationship to work, and it’s being driven by employees themselves.
And note that NOTHING pisses me off more than when Fortune or Forbes or one of those other jackals has another article from some business exec talking about how “if you just worked as hard as me, if you just got back to the office and put in those 80 hours, your life would be great.” I love eviscerating those articles (not that anyone reads my blog, but it’s a personal catharsis).
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I know people who work a full time job, a part time job, and have hobbies they make money from, and none of them are ever going to be millionaires.
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The Protestant Work Ethic is one hell of a toxic drug.
I feel really sorry for any young American I see who’s indulging in “hustle culture”, thinking that it’s going to allow them to get rich in this rigged economy. It’s a brutal and cruel version of the lottery.
I truly hope so. I’ve long felt it’s my duty as a member of Gen X to encourage them in that direction.
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“If you married the boss’s daughter like me”; or
“If you were born into hereditary wealth like me”; or
“If you cheated your investors like me”;
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I’m beyond tired of hustle culture. It pumps out shitty advice that makes people work themselves too hard and feel bad about taking time for themselves. I never fully bought it into the idea I needed to hustle all the time, but my gods, I still feel incredibly guilty when I try to take time to myself. I’m a small business owner (technically) and when I’m not doing the work, I should be finding the work, talking about the work, or living the work? Nah. Screw that noise.
I think my big break away from the guilt was taking about 24 hours off to go camping/fishing and life didn’t explode. Heck, I may have even gotten paid while I was away. Regardless, life didn’t end and I came back quite a bit more relaxed than when I left.
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Put simply, nobody honestly earns a million dollars a year.
(with the caveat that exploiting workers is not honest work)
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But what about doing the hustle? Is that still okay?
Okay… what’s happening with these outfits?
And don’t say “it was the 70s”… that’s not good enough…
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The 70s = Earth tones for lots of folks. I’m also thinking “Let’s make something dreamy like Jeannie, but not I Dream of Jeannie.”
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That’s John Michael Higgins, isn’t it?
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Totally. I wish more people saw what goes on in tech companies. Young CEOs start a company, then go get a huge pile of Series A funding, then pay themselves multi-million dollar salaries. They plug away at their little company for a couple of years and maybe sell it for a bundle or it just fails. Either way, they walk away rich for doing very little. All they did is beg for money, then pay themselves with it. All the employees, meanwhile, were brainwashed into working 80 hour weeks for someone else and the CEO goes off somewhere and does it again (or retires at 30 because he feels like it).
Now it’s even worse. The new strategy is “M&A Focus” whereby these tech companies borrow money, use that money to buy other companies, then declare that to investors as “growth”. “We grew 2000% this year!”. No you didn’t. You borrowed money and bought other companies with said money. No new value was created in the world. Value was shuffled around, is all. However investors believe it is growth, and buy the merged company out for billions. It’s all an insane scam.
Eat the rich.
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I believe it is. I only realized it when I grabbed it from the tube, it had to be early in his career
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Mrs Peas’ good friend started a relationship with a tech entrepreneur a few years ago. After visiting their home she was shocked at how nice it was considering that they had just laid off most of their staff and were on the brink of bankruptcy. I told her that the very first thing they do once the funding clears is to give themselves a fat salary and a huge equity chunk. It doesn’t ever have to be a profitable company for him to live like a prince. And if it goes belly-up, they’ve already bought into that world and can coast from one six or seven figure gig to the next.
Oh, and they didn’t go bankrupt; they “pivoted” and got another round of funding.
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Yup. Our CEO bought himself a three million dollar house on the beach when the company wasn’t even profitable. It’s all a pyramid scheme.
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