The Hardest Working People on the Planet
jonbischke.com
jonbischke.com
I've been trying to put my finger on why that is, and I think it all comes down to misallocation of resources. Over time, work becomes focused inwards at a large corporation, dedicated to supporting the inner world of the corporation instead of the outer world of the market. Without market discipline, decisions get made that seem logical to the decision-maker but are actually very pessimal from an efficiency standpoint. Some team might create an API that's a continual tax on its users, but without the ability to bypass it and use or write an alternative, there's no way around it. Or some VP may make a decision that seems sensible at a time, but mortgages future development, and without the ability for that initial project to fail and get completely reverted, you'll never arrive at the optimal solution.
Working hard is generally a necessary but not sufficient condition for success, and it's nowhere near a straight-line correlation. Far more important is to pay attention to what you're working on, and make sure that it's actually important. You can't succeed with zero hard work, but you can get much farther with a little smarts and little hard work than with a lot of hard work.
It is exceedingly easy to work hard at a big corporation. The goals set out are generally clear, and if you finish early there are always plenty of other projects. I'll liken it to an all you can eat buffet, you can always take more once you've finished what's on your plate.
The difference in working at a startup is that you must create those tasks that need doing. You can't grab them from an already pre-existing forumla. Simply put, you've got to plan and cook your dinner, and if you're still hungry, you've got to plan and cook more.There's a fair amount of gruntwork at a startup that's pretty obvious too, eg. when I was doing mine, I had to do all the server admin. This falls out naturally from actually having servers that need to stay up. I'd say that probably 80% of startup work is gruntwork, which isn't all that different from a job description in a big company.
The farmers and fishermen I knew growing up worked incredibly hard but I honestly don't remember a single one of them telling anyone about how hard they work. However, having worked on farms and (briefly) on a North Sea trawler when I was a student I can honestly say nothing you can do inside in the nice and warm can possibly come close - remember that the guys running farms and fishing trawlers are running businesses as well, usually on pretty damned low margins or unpredictable cashflow.
Edit: Not sure which "personalities" I'd have on a "working hard" list - but it would probably include this chap:
The "hard work" is a mantra repeated over and over and over especially by entrepreneurs to a point that I really get sick of it. Entrepreneurs love that phrase and love the idea to think about themselves of being hard-working.
Truth is, you don't need to be hard-working to be successful. Not at all. If you "work hard" (in the wishy-washy terms of how entrepreneurs use that phrase), you're doing it wrong.
Edit: I want to add that we all should be glad that none of us really has to work hard to get decent money in the bank account. We should appreciate every day that our lives are so comfortable and that we have so much money that we aren't required to do the really hard work like our ancestors had to do. As long as everybody has the self-delusion of being hard-working, we can't appreciate the comfort we have and pay some true respect to the people who can't have the same wealth and comfort.
Harder on the body? On my back? No. More stressful? Harder on my mind, my life, and relationships? YES. Not every day, but we all know about those days.
What constitutes "hard work" is different for everyone. I think the linked blog entry is mixing "hard work" with "lots of work", which is simply not the same.
We get paid for doing things that other people don't want to do. It turns out that most people would rather work hard than take on additional risk; they at least know what to do when they work hard, and what they'll get for it. That means that taking on risk can be very professionally lucrative, but the problem is then you have to deal with uncertainty constantly.
I used to dream about how awesome it would be to have an office job, get paid a nice salary to work on problems inside w/ AC. It's still not easy work and sometimes I might complain, but compared to the shit I used to do when I was a kid, it's a vacation.
There are dozens of these answers where this kind of 'slave' labor is still going on.
So stop tooting the horn of those hard working entrepreneurs (I'm one of them). And please try not to offend other people with these kinds of titles and articles.
Moreover, I think it's ridiculous to commend and "respect" villagers for having to endure unnecessary hardships; it's as if the commender attains a stance of moral superiority for valuing "what really matters". It's not clear to me that:
1) Living rurally is actually net worse for a human being
2) If living rurally is indeed net worse for a human being, that commending and respecting them is a good thing - perhaps such a situation should be held in contempt in order to promote a more radical advance in technology
3) I think effort and willpower deserve respect -- merely having to endure hardship, while unfortunate, is not necessarily worthy of my respect.
P.S. As a friendly FYI, "Smurk" is not a word.
Mental illness is no way to live.
And for every captain of industry who worked 24/7, there are plenty who relax, enjoy life, and still manage to move mountains.
That said - I do agree with you that a lot of these people are neurotic. Not all work is equal - some of it in my opinion is a waste of time - and it just keeps people off the streets.
... and you'd never see your children.
Y'all don't know my struggle
Y'all can't match my hustle
You can't catch my hustle
You can't fathom my love dude
Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers
That's a different world like Kree Summers
I deserve to do these numbers
- Kanye West, SpaceshipPassion.
If there is something that you love, whatever it is, from your work to your family, you would do almost anything. Thanks for sharing.
I think the best summary of the article is a quote from the quote of Seth Godin: "[Hard work] begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with."
This article is not about physical labor or spinning your wheels without making progress. It's not about burning yourself out. It's about doing the shit that other people don't want to do. It's what Paul Graham was getting at when he wrote, "If you have two choices, choose the harder." It's what Thomas Edison was getting at when he said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
There are people who sit around on HN or Reddit all day not doing anything productive. Actually focusing on work for long periods of time is hard. There are anecdotal statistics that the average 40-hour-a-week worker works 1.5 hours a day. Hard work means working all 8.
While I think I agree with you, this argument is not very strong imo - it takes only a very small amount of people ('outliers' or 'abnormals' if you want) to think of new things that are then implemented by all the others. And this even includes much 'research' that is being done today - you only need 1 guy to drive a lab of 50 who do the things this one guy has imagined. And yet those 50 are also called 'researchers', and are already considered at the 'extreme' end of the curve of people able to self-mobilize.
Jon Bentley in Programming Pearls: Column 2.5 "Aha! Algorithms" "Good hackers are a little bit lazy: they sit back and wait for an insight rather than rushing forward with their first idea. That must, of course, be balanced with initiative to code at the proper time. The real skill, though, is knowing the proper time. That judgment comes only with the experience of solving problems and reflecting on their solutions."
Larry Wall in "Three virtues of a programmer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_program... "1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer."
John D Cook in "Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity?" http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/12/23/why-programmers-are... "Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code. They may realize the problem they’re being asked to solve doesn’t need to be solved, that the client doesn’t actually want what they’re asking for. They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their problem. They may cheat. But just when they are being their most productive, nobody says "Wow! You were just 100x more productive than if you’d done this the hard way. You deserve a raise." At best they say "Good idea!" and go on. It may take a while to realize that someone routinely comes up with such time-saving insights. Or to put it negatively, it may take a long time to realize that others are programming with sound and fury but producing nothing."
"They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their problem.": and how do they know that? Probably because they work hard at keeping up with the newest technological developments in different fields...
This alongside others who quit, sometimes repeatedly, only to return. Anthony Hopkins has sworn off acting several times. Berkley Breathed can't quit Opus after ending 3+ comic strip series.
The article used the slang term "anorak" to describe Eminem - someone who is utterly focused on one activity. Attempts to engage them in any other activity (save perhaps basic family functions) fail. Eminem has rapped about often shunning the indulgences of rockstardom in favor of locking himself in a bathroom stall or dank stairwell just to scribble lyrics in a ratty notebook.
They're great because it's all they do and all they can do, and greatness is a natural consequence. Take it away, and they either fight to resume it or expire in emptiness.
It is strange to think that a man, like any other man, so becomes singular in life and work in that work is his life and life is his work, to the point that such a massive passion grows for what they do that nothing else has any meaning.
That probably is simply because of a turn in life they made. If they are smart enough to be basically performing functioning humans, then the end of it would be a shock to the system, but which can be overcomed. So why must they expire?
I always lose interest when I read something like that. The last time I experienced this flow state was in college (or just after), when I was still coding entirely within a domain that I knew. Once I got into the real world, things got hard, domains changed with every assignment, and flow state became impossible.
I think a lot of nerds grow up, and get careers in technology, hoping they can spend their lives in that flow state.
But it's just almost never practical. Probably one of the only ways to do it now is open-source stuff, or by becoming an extreme specialist and working in a big corporation that shields you and accommodates you. In both cases you're probably taking a pay cut.
I've found that you can train yourself to get 'into that flow state' even with things that sometimes get a little bit less interesting. It does take a lot of willpower and self-convincing that it's worth it.