The “success isn't based on hard work” crowd
mleverything.substack.com
mleverything.substack.com
So of course we're going to tell our kids to work hard. It's the best chance they've got. Many things in life cannot be controlled, but all you can do as an individual is do your best with the limited inputs you can control.
At risk of getting all motivational-speaker-y[0], it's like if you fell in a crevasse. Nobody knows you are down there and nobody is coming to get you. What can you do other than try to climb out? You may find that you are unable to climb out, but the alternative to trying is to simply wait to die.
Of course, it's still perfectly reasonable to point out how unfair it is that many people start out down in the crevasse through no fault of their own, while others live their whole lives safe and cozy at base camp and don't see what the big deal is about climbing being hard.
You can work hard and never be successful. You can be successful by pure chance or luck without ever putting in any real effort.
It's easy to frame it as "those people just want an excuse for why they don't work hard", but that's asinine.
The truth is that some of the hardest workers on the planet (anecdotes of single mothers working three jobs to provide for their family come to mind) are living below the poverty line and there is no amount of harder work that would fix that.
Hard Work and Success have some correlation sure. It's tenuous at best.
No, I would not make the straw man argument you're proposing.
> If we define success as some arbitrary amount of money, we can make the correlation between hard work and success “tenuous” just by making the amount of money defining success to be high enough.
No one is defining success as some arbitrary amount of money.
We're both defining success relatively: you're defining it in relation to a hypothetical outcome for hypothetical courses of actions for a hypothetical single mother, whereas I'm defining success in relation to real outcomes for real people who start from different situations.
It likely would but not necessarily, depending on other factors.
"Her life would get worse" is a complete distraction here from the fact that she is working crazy hard and is not very successful.
I agree that if we define success as being a high enough value it ceases to be meaningful. Luckily society has a base level value we call "The poverty line" and we can use that as a metric. It's not a very good one, because living right at the poverty line is still not a desirable life. But it's what we have.
How does "hard work -> success" explain the millions of workers who live below the poverty line? If that is the base level of success that society sort of expects, then you would figure that anyone who has a job they work hard at should be able to be above it, no?
Are all of those workers just lazy? Not working hard enough?
We should not be so focused on "if you stop working hard, your life will get worse"
Instead we should focus on "Is it possible to better your position through hard work alone" and often that's not the case. For many people they have to work hard just to maintain a very low position in society. There is no meaningful chance for them to improve their position through hard work alone, so it's clear that hard work is not sufficient to predict success.
I don't care how you define success at this point. It's clear to me that working hard just to barely stay afloat is not it.
The hard work is maybe necessary to capitalize on luck but ultimately some people land high paying jobs where they don't have to work hard and can take afternoons off to golf, purely out of being lucky about who their family is.
Other people have to work themselves to the bone to earn a fraction what those people earn.
Hard work isn't necessary or sufficient for success.
If she stopped working hard, would she be equally as successful, since you know, work and success have a tenuous correlation?
She's already not very successful despite working like crazy. So arguably yes, she would be pretty much as successful if she stopped working versus running herself ragged.
Or if she's pretty (luck) she might meet a well-off partner (also luck) and suddenly not need to work as hard. Or if she wins the lottery, as another poster mentioned. Or maybe someone finds oil on her property (luck), which she only owns because she inherited it (luck).
I'll admit that none of these situations are terribly likely.
My main point was more around how someone could be working three jobs, arguably working harder than almost anyone else in society, and still be barely considered successful. Her ability to be "equally successful" if she stopped working is kind of a red herring here because the problem is she's already not very successful despite working harder than anyone.
I think your example says more about your own values rather about society in general
Again what I am talking about, and you are ignoring, is the magnitude of the work being done here, versus the relatively scant level of success achieved. Barely being able to afford a roof over your head is not success by any measure except against the most basic of standards. If you have to compare your level of success to someone who literally lives on the streets, you're in a dire situation.
We should absolutely want better for people than "they barely aren't homeless and it takes a monumental effort for them to stay that way"
Not necessarily, it could be a gift or even something they find on the street.
It's also not the point. All through this thread you are ignoring that people are talking about relative hard work effort versus success output.
Buying a lottery ticket is such little effort I'd barely even call it "work". So the the work effort is tiny. The success outcome if you win is absolutely enormous. The deciding factor is luck.
This is why I say hard work and success are barely related. It's possible, perhaps even likely, to work hard and see little success, while others work less hard, get lucky, and see huge success.
At best, hard work gives you more opportunities to get lucky. People who get lucky in this manner (or wish they could) often say that hard work is a way of making your own luck, but that's just a form of survivorship bias imo.
It is more that you still had to work hard to learn development and get those connections. So it is working hard for yourself like learning new things doing hard things. Stepping down and looking around what else you can do or change is also often hard. Getting every day up and keeping your flat in order at some times is harder, especially if you have demanding physical job.
Where the opposite is drinking six pack each evening and watching tv-series or playing games and sticking up with working hard in dead-end job.
Just to clarify, there are also all kind of in-between strategies where some weeks you just get lazy and drink beers and some weeks where you read 3 books and learn something awesome.
In the end there is that joke:
CEO jumps out of his brand new car and sees intern - Hi, you noticed my car, get up earlier, work harder, then I will be able to get even a better one.
Point is work harder but for yourself. Sometimes life sucks and for some people just getting out of the bed in the morning might be hard work.
I'm too lazy (lol) to refute your rant point-by-point, because like every other internet argument I'm sure you're certain you're right, but this part irks me:
> Sometimes people point out someone performing a grueling menial job and wonder why he isn’t “successful” despite his hard work. But they never stop to ask, what would his life be like if he stopped working hard? Would what little “success” he has now carry over, since you know, hard work won’t lead to success?
Oh well, I'm sure that underpaid menial worker appreciates it very much that you got to define what "success" means for him, "Hey don't worry about 16 hour days for $5/hour and still worrying about food and shelter and never having time for your kids, in my book you're successful!".
"Hard work alone won't bring success, you need a bit of luck" doesn't mean "just be a slacker", it means, well, I think it means, "Work hard and hope the cosmic dice lands correct a lot.".
Besides, the view that "hard work always equal success, let's not worry about luck" has the terrible flip side that you view unsuccessful people not as unlucky, but as lazy. And we just need to see how much this has shaped policy in the United States, like that imaginary welfare queen Reagan invented.
I think what we should be looking at is the amount of luck required to succeed. And that is most definitely increasing.
However it isn't just luck vs hard work. Hard work leads to creating more luck.
Become CEO of a unicorn? Sure.
To live a happy and meaningful life? Or give a better life to your children? Then I don't agree. I would say for most its very hard to live a a happy meaningful life without working hard. There's some chance involved, sure. It would be hard to lead such a life if you're diagnosed with a debilitating disease. But I think the primary cause of success in this sense is hard work and sacrifice.
The problem here is that "better" encompasses a wide range of things. When people say "success isn't based on hard work," what they seem to mean is that how much better is highly dependent on luck (also, without hard work and with luck you can achieve success, but not the inverse).
Relatively.
The author defines the success as the outcome for a hypothetical hard-working single mother with relation to the outcome of a hypothetical alternative where that single mother stops working.
I prefer to deal with reality, so I'd rather define success of real people as their outcomes relative to the outcomes for other real people who work equally hard.
The straw man argument: you're accusing people of saying "success isn't based on hard work". But the actual thing people are saying in the Pew research study you cited is, "hard work is no guarantee of success for most people". These are very different statements.
In fact you go on to say:
> The “success isn't based on hard work” article I would like to read is one written by a mother or father of a teenage child. It would talk about how they discourage their child from any hard work, knowing that it’s unlikely to be rewarded.
The reason you're not reading that, is that that's not what anyone is saying. The reason you would like to read that it would reinforce your world view, not that it's honest.
The ad-hominem attack: you said:
> The most infuriating part is that people writing these articles don’t believe it themselves. Take for instance this Linked In post that declares “Success is really more Luck than Hard Work”. The author of the article has three professional degrees (bachelors in electrical engineering, masters in economics and political science and an MBA). He works as head of M&A at a company that has 125,000 employees. Do you think he believes that hard work doesn’t amount to success? Does he state this when interviewing for a job or hiring candidates? Does he teach this to his children?
That's an abject failure to prove that the person writing that article doesn't believe what they're saying. You're asking these questions as if they are rhetorical questions, but they aren't. Just because he's successful, doesn't mean that he worked hard to get there, or that he On the contrary, the fact that this person has multiple degrees and is head of M&A at a company with 125,000 companies may be exactly why he believes that success is about luck; he may have gotten those successes by luck or at least perceive that to be the case.
You followed up with more ad-hominem attacks:
> Saying “I was lucky” is a sort of penance for those who have had success. It’s meant as a humbling statement used to almost excuse their immense success as an accident of fortune.
You're accusing people who say this of virtue-signalling. ...and:
> Whenever I hear that success isn’t based on hard work, it’s almost always coming from a place of privilege.
If you're going to discount the opinions of people who speak from a position of privilege, maybe start by discounting your own opinion, Mr. very white male who has excess capital to "work hard with"[1]. To be clear, I don't think we should discount people's opinions who speak from positions of privilege: I'm merely point that if that's your argument, it's hypocritical.
And now for the weird one:
> Society stops functioning if people think that outcomes are predetermined at birth or random.
The thing is, the truth is true whether people believe it or not. So if hard work stops being effective because people stop believing it's effective, maybe that wasn't so true to begin with.
The one thing in your article I can't argue with is your personal experience:
> Most of living the good life is doing what you’re supposed to do. Show up on time, be honest, be faithful to your partner, do what you say you’re going to do. The other part is don’t do things that you’re not supposed to do. Don’t eat or drink too much, stay away from addictive substances and dangerous activities, don’t hurt others.
But your experience is very limited. Here's my experience: I've watched numerous people in my life be honest, faithful to their partners, and reliable, avoid drinking, addictive, substances, and dangerous activities, and not hurt others. And I've watched many of those people lose jobs or just stagnate in careers because of office politics that had nothing to do with them, or come down with illnesses they can't afford to treat. A friend of mine built a business only to have it crushed by frivolous lawsuits when a billionaire wanted the building he was in. Another friend of mine was laid off after over 20 years working up through a company in a narrow field with few job prospects, so the CEO's son could have his job. Another of my friends who works at a nonprofit watched one of his mentees get a few years sober, obtain most of a culinary degree, and start his own business, only to be wrongfully arrested for possession of narcotics: charges were later dropped when video showed the cop planting the cocaine on him, but by the time the charges were dropped, he had failed out of culinary school due to non-attendance and lost his business.
And my direct personal experience, is that I worked all through my 20s and early 30s with moderate success, and obtained more excess capital in late 2020/early 2021 by throwing a few thousand dollars into cryptocurrencies than I did in my entire 14 year career. I'm doing pretty well, but a little luck has paid off better in my life than all my hard work.
[1] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/crypto-decentralized-fin...