Working Hard. The biggest bullshit. | Hacker News Reader

Working Hard. The biggest bullshit.

13 pointsrokhayakebe47 comments

Sorry to interrupt, but I have a question. Do you really feel as if YOU working hard is ultimately going to make you successful. What I am saying is that would it not be smarter< even if you are building a startup, to find individuals who just are crazy about working and pay them the buck to do it. I also see lots of people who work hard, but their financial situation just cannot get better, although they do not spend lots of money. I am seriously re-thinking this working hard thing.

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Empirically the answer seems to be that working hard is a necessary if not sufficient condition for doing great things, and for getting rich in particular.

It's an interesting question why you can't simply find suckers who like to work hard, and get rich off their efforts while you sit back and do nothing. One reason is that they'd have to be stupid to let you do that, and it's not much use having stupid people working for you, no matter how hard they work.

Another reason is that having people work for you is not zero work for you. You have to tell them what to do, and often this requires a great deal of effort. In fact, it's probably not possible to have good ideas about what to do in some field without at some point having worked hard in it yourself.

This doesn't truly answer your objections, but one company I've always been fascinated by is McDonald's. It's always amazed me that they can take relatively uneducated individuals and get them to turn out a hot meal every 90 seconds.

I'm convinced that the real money comes from designing good systems. I once heard that the reason McDonald's color codes the register buttons is so that even employees who are basically illiterate can hit the right button quickly and accurately. Brilliant.

The problem with being stuck in a system like McDonald's is that even though it makes the least skilled/productive people much more efficient, it also puts a cap at how efficient you can ultimately get. I suspect the most successful people are the ones that are able to recognize when they are trapped in someone else's system, especially if it's inefficient, and break out of it.

I suspect that's the key to success in entrepreneurship too, designing good systems. What most people don't realize is that the money doesn't come from mastering systems, but from designing and creating them. The guys running scientology are making a lot more money than the guys trying to get to Thetan level whatever.

Not that designing systems isn't work, but at least it's the kind of work that one might enjoy even if one doesn't enjoy toiling away in traditional institutions.

It's hard to explain well since no one ever talks about this stuff, but hopefully this post sort of makes sense.

Read Jim Collins' Built to Last. His thesis is that visionary corporations don't result from markets or products or ideas, but from cultures. Entrepreneurs whose companies survive for centuries work very hard to create a whole system of values and beliefs and purpose and then institutionalize them into every aspect of the organization. Clock-builders, not time-tellers.

http://www.amazon.com/Built-Last-Successful-Visionary-Compan...

I'll check it out. To use organization behavior speak, I'd bet that culture is to knowledge workers what systemic design is to routinized labor. That being said, I think there is a lot more money to be made from designing systems than from designing culture for three reasons:

A) Everyone knows about the importance of corporate culture for knowledge workers. While different businesses might require different best practices, there is still going to be a lot of overlap between different companies with "good" cultures. WHEREAS few people know how to design efficient systems for routinized labor, and the systems will be very specific to the company.

B) Routinized labor scales much more, so creating good systems gives you a lot more leverage than creating good cultures.

C) Knowledge workers don't create wealth in predictable patterns. With the best culture all you can do is make it more likely that someone will create something of value. But with a good system you are actually increasing measurably increasing your yield, just like finding a better catalyst for a chemical equation.

edit: Of course this isn't to say that it isn't possible to design systems for knowledge work also. Public schools are an excellent example of this. (Although, strictly speaking, schools are designed to be like factories so maybe not.)

Fantastic recommendation - I find Jim Collins' books very informative and practical; tons of great useful nuggets

I read 'Good to Great' and wasn't impressed. It's not bad... but I wouldn't call it "great", either. He strikes me as some sort of "management guru", who is very unhackerish compared to other business books that actually introduce clever ideas.

I know we're diverging from the original topic a bit, but I'd like to make a couple of comments about 'Good to Great.' I enjoyed it solely on the fact that there was a tremendous amount of research and data mining involved. He set it up as close to experimental standards as you could get in that area and pulled out the threads with the highest correlation. Adding buzzwords like hedgehog to it, however, is another story.

Since I have a mild fetish for management books, I've drawn a couple conclusions on the whole genre itself. 'Clever ideas' are subjective. I feel that if a book gives you a straight-line recipe to success, then the message has failed because it has overlooked the nuance and gray(grey?) areas that is associated with running organizations and working with people.

Enough of this; back to the topic at hand.

Interesting - I'd actually like to discuss further, but your profile has no contact information. Email me at davidw atttttt dedasys.com

"I'm convinced that the real money comes from designing good systems."

This is also the thesis of "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael E. Gerber, which I'd recommend given the above comment. It's an easy read that talks about developing systems not just for profit, but also in a way that is ethically sound to both you and your employees and your customers. The book speaks mostly about small retail franchices (an example of a hotel is also given), but it is easily applicable to other areas.

i am sure there are better examples of automation

Ford would be one...

oh and an unlucky person considered uneducated doesn't mean is stupid

You are bringing a very good point. I was not implying that one should not work at all and run a sweat shop, but rather break the whole process into piece and find people who can do it better than you at a lower cost (physical, mental and financial). As I said earlier it is more like using my money . to fund the company or use Angel's money. I will go with other people money and now I also think I will go with other people hard work if I can outsource mine.

Here's a question to both pg and rokhayakebe:

How do you each define "working hard"? Is it the difficulty of the problem you're trying to solve or is it more so the time spent thinking about and/or physically solving the problem?

I ask this because I often find that at my job, the work is more frustrating than hard. Yet, at the end of the work day, I still feel drained physically and mentally, although the work is not challenging (or satisfying).

his question is abstract, which is evidence of an individual unable to concentrate on a demanding task, "including" the one of understanding what you just said.

> Empirically the answer seems to be that working hard is a necessary if not sufficient condition

I think the empirical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that connections are way more important than working hard. The majority of rich people got there mostly by knowing the right powerful and well positioned people. Modern tech is anomalous regarding the value of hard work and skill. It also accounts for a small fraction of the wealthy.

Carnegie wrote explicitly against hard work and in favor of the value of networks. I'm sure the other robber barons agreed.

Read "They Made America" and see page after page of brilliant inventors of the last 200 years who died broke, but whose inventions produced fortunes for other well positioned people.

Well I don't know if this answers your questions, but here's what I think.

"Working hard", by itself, isn't enough to get you rich, and it can often take you entirely in the wrong direction. You can work your ass off and read business books like "Good to Great" or techie books like "Programming Collective Intelligence" (which I bought and think is good), and 10 years later you can still be sitting on your couch, watching TV, thinking "I worked hard, why am I still not a rock star?" I can work my ass off and implement a new Web application in 3 hours, but if nobody uses it I'm still a failure, at least in an entrepreneurial sense.

For every effect there is a logical sequence of causes. If you want to launch a successful company, you have to follow a finite sequence of steps (think of idea, write good code, listen to user feedback, etc.). There is an infinite pool of actions that are NOT part of the sequence of steps that will not help you AT ALL towards starting a great company. The really challenging (yet necessary) part is figuring out what these useless activities are, and avoiding them. Figure out what exactly is necessary and do those things. Don't BS yourself and think "if I just work hard at these X things that everyone else says are important, I will some day make it big."

But I think even if you've figured out exactly what you need to do, a lot of ENERGY and ACTION is needed. Nothing important gets done without a lot of action.

"Working hard" is a bad term, because it sort of implies having a miserable time. I love tennis. When I play tennis I'm running all over the court and diving to make tough shots. I'm exhausted after a match. But I don't consider this working hard, I consider it high-energy playing. I think it's important to not only choose an end result you want, but also to find a process/means for getting to that end result that is so enjoyable that it doesn't seem like working hard at all, but rather like a high-energy game of tennis.

You're averaging 11 posts a day, so I doubt you are working very hard.

Why put the guy down? You can make 11 posts a day and still be doing a lot of things in the background. And I think "hard work" is a concept that could use some more study.

Everyone deserves a break once in a while to "reset" the brain. If I had to code without any breaks, I wouldn't last more than a week without the brain melting

11 posts takes about 15 minutes if most of the post are one-liners or one-paragraphers...

That assumes that you aren't reading anything prior to posting. My guess is he blows 30-60 minutes a day.

My point here is not my posts. I am asking your opinion about working hard in general vs having others to do it. It is just as asking self-fund your startup or using other people's money. I rather use your money.I personally do not think I work hard anymore and I would like to keep it this way.

ha!

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference.

Tapping with a hammer ....... $ 2.00 Knowing where to tap ........ $ 9998.00

http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2007/08/knowing-...

Whoa... that hammer quote is a stroke of brilliance.

I fear it has been said a hundred times. But its still right:

Don't work hard, work smart!

If you don't use your brain to plan, replan and think again, even hard work will get you nowhere (or at random places).

Well, surely working hard and working smart can be combined. But there is a limit: I usually stop coding, after it takes me too long to find the right algos. Sure I can go on then with stupid things like taxes, telephone calls and so on. But if I do, I have to pay back for that the next morning.

So basically I would answer the original post with: think!, then work as hard as you can, but get your breaks. All has to be well balanced or you'll burn out. Best is, if you find things that relax and that you'll enjoy while doing more work (having beer with your co-founders ;o).

A lot of people do the mental equivalent of moving a pile of bricks 20 feet to a new pile one by one. It may be hard, but it's also ineffective.

When I think of working hard in an entrepreneurial context I'm thinking of someone who's breaking down barriers, being relentless, striving for greatness (not just "good enough"), taking on tasks others would be afraid to, etc. Generally just pushing beyond the boundaries of what most people are willing to do.

I know a few people who are ridiculously successful and they all work (or worked) so hard that your average person couldn't handle their workload for even one week.

Right. I think the poster is missing half of the equation. I know lots of people who work really hard at what they do. But what they do just keeps the afloat, so they can go back in the next day and work really hard again.

The other part of the equation is being smart, watching for better opportunities, working on things on the side, or even quitting your job and living off of ramen while founding the Taginatr2000.com.

"As for the poor, they do not appear in Locke's little book at all."[45] In his "Essay on the Poor Law," Locke turns to the education of the poor; he laments that "the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are 12 or 14 years old."[46] He suggests, therefore, that "working schools" be set up in each parish in England for poor children so that they will be "from infancy [three years old] inured to work."[47] He goes on to outline the economics of these schools, arguing not only that they will be profitable for the parish but also that they will instill a good work ethic in the children.[48]"

Contrast this with what he suggests to an Aristocrat in Some Thoughts Concerning Education which should be taught to all children regardless of class.

The point; slaves are taught a "good work ethic"(the same as "working hard") and the ruling class are not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Thoughts_Concerning_Educat...

There are ways to get rich without working hard: most of them are all about taking a big risk. Gambling, robbing banks, that sort of thing.

But as pg said, working hard is necessary for doing something great.

Greatness seems to require a very focussed hard work, though. You not only have to work very hard, but on exactly the right things. Simply putting in long hours coding probably isn't enough.

Robbing a bank successfully takes hard work too, just of a different kind.

> There are ways to get rich without working hard

"behind every great fortune lies a great crime" --Balzac

First off, congrats on a completely misleading title.

I feel like your question overlooks something, namely that if your goal is to become successful, then until you do, you probably won't have the "buck" to pay your crazy smart hard-working individuals their worth to work for you. In order to acquire the money to pay them (and them is plural, remember) you're going to have to work for it. And working hard will probably get you that money faster than not working hard.

Finally, your claim about the people whose "financial situation just cannot get better" intrigues me. Who are these people? Do they have extenuating circumstances causing this? Do you find yourself in those same circumstances, or why are you so ready to align yourself with their plight?

You are just changing what you are working hard on.

Instead of working hard on programming, you are now working hard to get a team of people to create your idea the way you want it.

If you think that is easy, not a chance. Managing people is a lot more work then programming. With programming it is you and the computer. You tell the computer what to do and most of the time the computer complies.

With people, when you tell them what to do they are way less cooperative then a computer and if you think people are just going to be "on the same page" as you are and just come up with stuff that matches what you wanted.. well I have tried that and it doesn't work.

It is called capitalism. You put your capital to work instead of working yourself.

Unfortunately, if you don't already have capital to pay people, you are going to need to build up capital by working... hard.

I think a better way to look at the situation is by separating hard work and difficult work. Godin has a great post on this topic which he just republished Monday. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/09/labor-day.ht...

If you push people hard enough...

... they will either:

- not be as productive (obvious)

- start being deceptive about what they're actually doing (to avoid repercussions)

- finally, they'll leave for greener pastures

I realize you're coming at it from a personal perspective... but it's something for startup founders to keep in mind as they bring on employees / non-founders.

There's a great example of this happening in practice in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJU1dzc5kM

To demonstrate how hard I'm not working right now, I'd like to point out that the phrase "YOU working hard" is grammatically incorrect. I think it should be "YOUR working hard" because "working" is a gerund. I could be wrong. I should get back to work now.

I think I can sum up your question - and the answer to your question - in one word:

Leverage.

Yes, it's often used as an empty business buzzword, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot behind it.

want to get rich? start a religion. oh nevermind...you still have to work hard to get early adopters... <i>just like any other thing</i>

They say: One who works, has no time to make money.

Working hard is for suckers. Look at cats and hot chicks - they don't work at all and yet they find people to bust their rear ends to provide food and housing for them. Hard work is for amateurs and suckers. Pros are in it for the money. The best thing to do is to find some suckers and convince them you have a secret magical system that helps their hard work translate into success. But first they have to subscribe for $199/month. And you'll automatically rebill their cards unless they send you a letter written backwards in mandarin chinese which replaces every 7th word with every fourth. Then just sit back and do nothing and you'll get rich. Either that or convince them of some impending doom that only you know how to escape ... provided of course that they will demonstrate their worthiness by parting with their material goods - which of course you'll safekeep for them.

(you're probably just being sarcastic but) no offense, being a successful shyster takes a lot of hard work and planning too...

the only difference is that it's a lot more exciting for certain people/scum. which brings me to another point: hard work doesn't feel like hard work if it's your passion

"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted."

You have a good point about hard work and passion. You have also just provided one of the best quotes in Fight Club. Good job!

Just to nitpick, cats work hard too. Cats tend to be more nocturnal creatures. If you let them out at night, they'll spend that time hunting for food (if they were taught that by their mother) and defending what they view as their property.

During the day they mostly sleep, which is why people think they're lazy. Actually, their schedule is more aligned with that of startup hackers: work during the night, sleep during the day.

While I think some of these people can provide valuable services without being a shyster, there is definitely that element floating around the web, especially the "Internet Marketing" space. (and the JohnChow.com crowd)

I do find it hilarious though that many of these internet marketing nerds make hundreds of thousands a month while many Web 2.0 companies spend millions and can barely bring in a few thousand in revenues.

> The best thing to do is to find some suckers and convince them you have a secret magical system that helps their hard work translate > into success. But first they have to subscribe for $199/month.

Been there, done that. http://www.SystemsCanBeDuplicated.com

I'd up vote you a hundred times if I could

:: How to be Thousandaire ... or cat

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