[HN Gopher] Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture
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Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture
Author : flail
Score : 49 points
Date : 2025-08-14 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| moc_was_wronged wrote:
| The lottery is, famously, a tax on people who don't understand
| probability.
|
| Hustle culture is a tax on people who think they will always be
| in the top 0.01% if they just manifest hard enough.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I feel like the math is weird too.
|
| Fermi estimate - doubling my work hours will also halve my
| waking free time. Doubling my work hours as an individual
| contributor will not make the company twice as productive. It
| will not make my stocks worth twice as much.
|
| Does anyone else see the math this way? Employee stock
| ownership does not give you linear returns with hours worked.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Fermi estimate - doubling my work hours will also halve my
| waking free time.
|
| 40h work. 56h sleep. 72h free time.
|
| 80h work. 56h sleep. 32h free time.
|
| Ok fair enough close enough to half I though the share would
| be worse. But in practice, your energy is spent and the free
| time will suck. Also a reasonable commute of 8h will make the
| share 64 to 24, a 'third'.
| mikrl wrote:
| This is missing one extremely cynical interpretation.
|
| What if the output isn't the real goal, it's having a workforce
| that thinks more like footsoldiers than professionals?
|
| Of course 2x hustle doesn't scale to 2x output, you can't tell me
| that all these smart people are just ignorant of that. It has to
| be a different thing getting selected for.
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| This is why I'm not a consultant. It's a generalization, but
| there's a kind of learned helplessness almost in the culture of
| the big4. Client has a new requirement, and someone says "oh
| guess it'll be an allnighter, i'll start ordering pizzas". Nah
| man, this is like four extra hours of work- push the deadline,
| or just work smarter.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > _when someone dangles $10M in front of me_
|
| I'm cynical enough to think that such $10M will be fake money.
|
| It will be diluted or in some other way made into nothing.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yep, hundred percent.
|
| No boss will ever pay you enough to retire. Ten million is
| retire-this-afternoon money.
|
| Especially a boss talking about 50 hour work weeks. If there's
| really ten million in it, hire my friend and we'll each get
| five million and boss gets 80 dev-hours of really solid work
| per week
|
| Oh they won't do that? Maybe it's cause they're BSing up their
| own book
| lordnacho wrote:
| Crunch mode only works for when the finish line is in sight.
|
| Instead of a 40 hour week, you find out you are within 50 hours
| of the goal. So you ask the team to come in for 60 hours that
| week, get 50 effective hours, and give everyone time off the week
| after to recover.
|
| That's not what happens once you have the crunch mode button
| installed, though.
|
| I used to live with a banker. He'd sit at the office all day, and
| at about 6pm his boss would come back from meetings, and demand
| slides be ready for the next morning. So the little bankers would
| be sitting in the office from about 9am to midnight. This went on
| for years. Same with weekends and presumed nights off: someone
| would see it fit to phone the analysts on their night off to have
| them correct the font on a slide deck.
|
| Ultimately, this wears down everyone. People get stressed when
| there's no end in sight. The bad kind of stress that makes you
| lose your hair and your sanity.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| > The bad kind of stress that makes you lose your hair and your
| sanity.
|
| And, ultimately, your life. I'd assume that no company is worth
| dying for, blatantly speaking. Especially so, if it's not your
| own.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This literally happened, and was one of the reasons my friend
| moved on from this kind of work.
| malshe wrote:
| I have this experience working in academia too. Closer to paper
| submission, all the coauthors work longer days. Emails at
| midnight and sometimes even Zoom calls at ungodly hours are not
| unheard of. But once the paper is submitted, usually things
| slow down.
|
| The people who don't slow down, usually end up burned out
| quickly. Their research suffers and it shows up in the quality
| of their work. Then the papers get rejected more often, which
| puts them more under pressure. It becomes a vicious cycle.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| This is right but missing that the goal of these corporate
| cultural proclamations is optimizing for people who are true
| believers in the mission. Whether that leads to better business
| outcomes than optimizing for really smart people who believe in
| work-life balance... I personally doubt.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Wall Street and the big corporate law firms of NYC/DC have been
| championing extreme hours since the 1980s. Maybe earlier. So it's
| interesting to see the short- and long-term effects of this on
| people's lives.
|
| Informal assessment here, re: how these versions of "hustle
| culture" have played out. First, people who can last a long time
| do make a lot of money. Second, the wipe-out rate is pronounced
| but not catastrophic. Yes, there's sometimes a price to pay in
| terms of bad marriages, early heart attacks, etc. but it's not so
| pervasive that everyone who chases all-out success comes up
| short. You can win at this game.
|
| Third -- and this perhaps OPs best area for questioning: When you
| work 90-hour weeks, your judgment about picking the right
| projects goes to hell. You're the greyhound going round the track
| as fast as you can, chasing the rabbit that you'll never catch.
| Your rabbit-value assessment system doesn't exist. You just keep
| running toward whatever someone else points you toward. On Wall
| Street, a lot of marathon hours are spent trying to close deals
| that won't close. Or that turn out to have been identifiable
| mistakes/misguided obsessions.
|
| I was chatting earlier this year with a former Big Law attorney
| who spent a frenzied year after Hurricane Katrina drafting
| blizzards of legal filings so that big insurers could dodge
| claims. Her work was valued enough that she (and her firm) got
| paid a lot and maybe even did landmark work. Nearly 20 years
| later, is that the career badge that you'll always feel good
| about?
| bloomca wrote:
| > Nearly 20 years later, is that the career badge that you'll
| always feel good about?
|
| Well, if the result work has negative connotations, you
| wouldn't even mention it (especially after 20 years). However,
| as you said:
|
| > enough that she (and her firm) got paid a lot and maybe even
| did landmark work
|
| At the end of the day, that's what mostly matters. Sure, some
| people believe in what they are doing and put insane hours, but
| most just do it for money. And if they manage to get a lot,
| then yeah, it was all justified.
|
| ---
|
| > Second, the wipe-out rate is pronounced but not catastrophic
|
| I agree with this -- people who are deeply invested in their
| projects are often already do the second shift. So if you are
| motivated enough, that's kind of the same, plus people can be
| in a position where they have no external obligations (often
| when they are young).
|
| It is bad long-term, but for a relatively short term for many
| it is a decent gamble.
| dfee wrote:
| An infection of Asian (Chinese?) culture on American work.
|
| I feel terrible for them, but recognize it's upped the ante over
| here (if they can, we should, as the article lays out), so
| sympathy manifesting to empathy and struggle.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Exactly. Unpopular take: I don't understand how the
| "fundamental flaw" is just the author's opinion that it's "not
| sustainable". Asian companies have sustained 60+ hour workweeks
| with high-skilled tech workers for decades.
|
| It's not fun. I don't want to do it. I don't support it. But it
| is one way to run a company.
| lazide wrote:
| It is generally 'sustainable' with a stay at home spouse,
| lots of drinking, and actually not a lot of actual work. But
| they do spend a lot of time at the office.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Sustainable for the company or sustainable for the workers?
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Before it was "hustle culture" it was "dot-com culture" or
| "startup culture" or "IPO culture".
|
| There are places where this sort of push is, manipulative. See
| the gaming industry where people are in it for "passion".
|
| But no one in dot com or startup or IPO land worked the 60 hour
| weeks for no reason. They worked them to get paid, and for their
| lottery tickets / stock options. It was gambling with time.
|
| And for a lot of people that worked out very well. For those that
| it didnt work out for they still did really well.
|
| If you want a 40 hour a week, no hustle job, then engineering /
| programing / startups might not be the right choice for you. Your
| pay will be reflected in that choice.
|
| It has always been this way, it will always be this way: it is a
| game of sharks and minnows.
| Shog9 wrote:
| IOW, a few sharks eat a tremendous number of minnows.
|
| Something I try to remember whenever the urge to "hustle" comes
| back: taking payoff I got from years of startup work,
| subtracting taxes and spread across those years... Still put me
| at just above market rate for those years. But instead of that
| market rate for 40 hour weeks, it was that rate for 80, 100,
| 120 hour weeks. I could've been working two bog-standard jobs
| for normal companies, worked fewer hours, and come out ahead.
|
| Everyone has a reason for gambling. It's rarely ever a good
| reason. But man, it's easy to lose yourself in rationalizations
| when you're in its thrall...
| vemv wrote:
| A sizeable chunk of well-recognised founders are simply scammers
| - they take VC money, sell dreams to customers, and exploit
| engineers as a necessary step to keep the ball rolling.
|
| Think of the operation of a pump and dump with extra steps. The
| mission is never about creating value, it's about pumping
| expectations and pulling the rug at the right time.
|
| Maybe a few of them live in the delusion of improving society
| with their products, but even then, the fact that they don't give
| a damn about the quality delivered to customers (or are qualified
| to make any technical judgement) makes them de facto scammers.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| That's why the real total compensation from a startup is salary
| and experience. Does this look good on my resume? Will I learn
| something I want to learn? Will I be saving money here?
|
| Stocks are worthless. If the company thought their stock was
| worth anything they wouldn't be giving it away to employees
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I've averaged 60-hour weeks for a year and a half, with bursts up
| to 90 hours. I only did it because we were working on new tech at
| the time, and I figured it was worth it to my long-term value as
| a programmer. I'd never do it in some stale tech.
|
| Also there was camaraderie. If I didn't like my coworkers, I
| never would have gone through it. We certainly didn't do it to
| make our bosses happy. In a weird way we almost had this attitude
| like we were doing it to _spite_ our bosses. Like: "We'll build
| this thing for you, but you better stay out of our way. Your job
| is to clear obstacles for us when we need it, and otherwise don't
| tell us how to do our jobs." Luckily our bosses were smart enough
| to just let us cook and not ruin our morale by micromanaging.
|
| The NBA legend Bill Russell said his dad told him, "Son, if the
| man asks you for 8 hours, give him 9. That way you can look any
| man on the job site straight in the eye and tell him to go hell."
| I like that attitude.
|
| I'm still friends with many of those coworkers, even though we
| haven't worked together since 2017. It's a bit like (I assume)
| sharing a foxhole in war. You'll always have that bond.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Also there was camaraderie.
|
| > It's a bit like (I assume) sharing a foxhole in war. You'll
| always have that bond.
|
| What is up with the romance? Nothing makes people as numb as
| being dragged into a trench and waiting for the shell with your
| name on it.
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