I believe the author has missed the point here. The conversation is not that “working hard is a bad thing”. “Hustle culture” is about making character judgements based on how many “hustles” one has going on at any given time. That is, if you aren’t killing yourself trying, then you aren’t trying. This is obviously awful and not a culture I want to live in. I’m happy that the author is having fun with their business, and that they’re able to devote a lot of energy to it. But someone who makes other choices isn’t lesser. Hustling isn’t righteous, it’s just a thing you can do if you want (and are able).
Edit: worth stating that “hustling” is almost never necessary. It can be a ploy to convince workers to save the venture money by doing extra work. It can be a tactic of control, or superiority. One thing is certain: it’s gross.
Colloquially, hustle isn't rigorously defined. The things you say are reprehensible, are (imo). However, where a person's primary job doesn't pay well enough, and won't provide future financial security, hustle (defined here as having any second job) is entirely necessary for many Americans, not just for a hypothetical future passive income stream, but also in order to make rent and other basic necessities.
Good observation. "Hustle" seems to exist in an interesting intersection of socio-economics. I know a lot of people working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and they never mention it being a hustle. This is what I don't understand. Is a hustle something that is supposed to bring in much higher rewards for less work? Is it just a different way to say you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet?
Aren’t these hustles the same thing? One is a boss manipulating others to work harder so they (the boss) can exploit the workers output. The other is (sorry to beat a dead horse) capitalism (late or otherwise) exploiting workers to the same end?
If you are "hustling" you are risking time and/or money for potential reward -- you're in control of what you're doing and could shift what you're doing in a heartbeat.
On the other hand if you've lost the locus of control, you're being "hustled".
E.g. I wouldn't say that taking a part time night shift at McDonald's to make ends meet is "hustling". It's possible the extra shift is needed because the landlord is greedy and keeps raising the rent by the maximum allowable by law.
Well, you seem to be rather obviously making a character judgement here. Choosing to value something doesn’t imply a value judgement is being made on all other things of potential value. It certainly doesn’t imply that all other potential values are lesser. Describing the values of others as being for certain gross is most definitely judging them as lesser.
You're making a false equivalence. It's okay to call out and have a low opinion of someone who you believe is behaving poorly or acting in bad faith. The parent is making a character judgement, but they explained their reasoning for doing so.
This isn't the same as a hustler making character judgements left and right, pretending not to, all while trying to gaslight their employees into doing more work for them for free.
The parent has a moral argument for their character judgement. A hustler wields character judgements along with guilt and shame as a tool for achieving their own ends.
> A hustler wields character judgements along with guilt and shame as a tool for achieving their own ends.
That is exactly the same thing as the parent comment is doing. The only point of difference between the judgemental parent comment and a judgemental “hustler”, is where you or I stand in relation to the position they each take.
You’re also putting forward a straw man argument. I’m not a proponent of “hustle culture”, but I’ve seen plenty of their prolific material. Working hard for your own benefit seems to me to be their most fundamental value. Working hard exclusively for the benefit of your employer seems to be exactly antithetical to the values I see them promote.
The core judgemental (and hypocritical) idea here is that “the things I value are promoted in good faith, and the things I disagree with are promoted in bad faith”, which is simply an attribution bias that displays the same judgemental-ness you’re complaining about.
The author demonstrates that a one-summer hustle had a good outcome. Nobody's trying to take that away from you. Sometimes, I cannot contain my passion for a problem and I need to make a choice: lie in bed with a buzzing brain, or get up and work on it. All that's fine. But, word of warning from somebody who was all hustle for over a decade: burnout is real.
Hustle culture says we should all be doing the 996 thing for our entire lives and if you don't you're a weakling who doesn't deserve bread. That's toxic. And (almost) nobody actually has that opinion. But it's what people hear when they're already burnt out and a cubemate brags about how little sleep they got before an arbitrary deadline.
Positive outcomes from self-driven hustle: good. Hustle culture: still toxic.
I once met someone who lived and breathed "hustle culture". They even had a giant poster about "the hustle" framed in their living room. They were all about business, (allegedly) making money, and "legacy building". They had endless stories about their luxurious lifestyle and vacations, since work hard and play harder was their motto, after all.
I later found out that it was all a ruse. They didn't own any businesses and weren't employed. They didn't even own/lease the apartment, they had convinced an elderly couple at a church they were sleeping in the basement of to put them up in the apartment for free.
To me, that person was the living, breathing personification of hustle culture as I know it.
This is my impression of the phrase too. I think there's a difference between being a go-getter or an entrepreneur (which can be fine things) and self-conscious "hustle culture", where people perform "hustle" and base their identities not in results but in the appearance of hard-charging success.
I think we have an epidemic of that right now both in the broader culture (e.g., MLMs, crypto hustling) and in tech, where some icons of success (Jobs, Zuckerberg) have led to countless dubious imitators (Theranos, WeWork).
- Working on your own project/company is tremendously different from working at someone else's stupid company that is obviously doomed to fail but you have a mortgage and kids so you need to work there for at least a year before switching jobs in order to not have your resume look weird
- Taking time off for vacation and getting adequate sleep are literally the things hustle culture rails against, since normies do that and to "succeed" you have to not do those
If a company is doomed to fail, you’re almost certainly better off to switch boats than to ride that one to the bottom. If it does fail, you have an easy “why’d you leave Titanic LLC?” answer. If it lumps along sideways for a few years, you still have an OK answer. Four six month stints in a row is a concern without any explanation. If three of those were duds, it’s still better to get out IMO. (To be honest, four twelve month stints isn’t piles and piles better.)
There's a difference between "hustle" and "hustle culture". Most reasonable people don't hate people who work hard. That's their prerogative.
"Hustle culture", or the expectation that anything less than "hustling" is invalid or invaluable is what people hate. They don't hate people who decide that they want to devote their spare time to a new startup, personal project, or whatever, just the (rather common) attitude and culture of people who subscribe that lifestyle.
I've had a bit of an axe to grind with the term "hustle" lately myself. I completely agree with your post and like the term when used as a coach uses it. When you have the motivation, use it!
But there's a darker definition; one I see play out inside tech circles quite frequently. The kind of thing that gets you in trouble in seedy bars, or makes you a lot of money if you can get away with it. It's barely legal (if at all) and covered in disguise and misdirection. Fake projects, exaggerated results, fronts and shields. A hustler can be cool, but is also a leech. One who feeds on the weak instead of elevating them. We should all be wary of the hustle but not write off the effort.
>What we need, instead, is a literature of self-awareness.
>Anyways, back to work.
I'm a bit confused; isn't this the exact kind of preachy post that the author is deriding here? Maybe a big part of what makes posts irritating is the preachy influencer attitude rather than the actual subject matter.
A single person working 10-12 hours on their own startup is not toxic. I wouldn't even call that a "culture". Founders/execs/managers slave-driving their employees to work 10-12 hours a day is a culture. And it's definitely toxic.
Very few things impress me, but dedication impresses me. Whenever someone is willing to sacrifice to chase something, I find it to be fascinating. Even if the something isn't particularly noble or even "good."
A singular focus on a goal at the expense of much over a long period of time - especially if that goal is achieved - is aspiring.
For me, that focus is my work, but for someone else, it might be their kids, their God, their country, their cause - whatever.
I'm also fascinated by the people who are so unyieldingly focused. I think it interests me because focus that intense points towards "existential meaning". Which itself is a subject worthy of considerable thought.
The dynamic on Twitter typically goes like this: Someone tells a story about working long hours for a satisfying result; then someone else clucks about that not being “healthy.”
The cluckers are wrong. They are also stupid (defined as deliberately refusing to use their brains).
The issue is NEVER about how hard you work. It is always about agency and meaning. So if you don’t want to look like and sound like and be an idiot, don’t judge the health of an operation merely by some arbitrary rubric about hours and sleep. Find out who is choosing this, and why.
I run my own business, with my wife. For 22 years it has consumed our lives. We’re okay. We take breaks along the way. Shut up, nanny bot assholes.
The assumption that because it worked for the author means it will work for everyone else is flawed. It doesn't work for everyone. Hard work is not the only criteria needed for success. That is exactly why it can be toxic.
Glad it worked for the author, but if the story had gone the other way, and they ended up broke and burned out yet needing to go get a job right away.... they would be telling quite a different tale.
I tend to put in very long days, and don’t get paid a shiny nickel.
I’m basically retired, and writing software for nonprofits.
I really, really enjoy writing software, and the time does not feel like a burden.
During my “day job” days, my corporate task (engineering manager) consisted of a whole lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. Not too many overlong days. It was fairly 9-5. I guess some folks would love it.
I hated it. It got the bills paid, and helped me to have sufficient investment to retire ten years early (like I had a choice, anyway). I couldn’t work on my own projects, on the company dime, and I did do a few projects for them, but these projects were ignored.
What kept me going, were the projects I did on my own time. Because the job was not too demanding, time-wise, I was able to get quite a bit done.
I have not heard the term “hustle culture” before, but I’m quite familiar with basic concept.
I don’t have an issue with people calling it “toxic,” if they mean people forcing others to “hustle,” or people that are “hustling” being all judgmental of others. If it is how we, on our own, choose to work, and it works for us, I won’t lose sleep over it.
"Hustle culture" is about a social norm, not how any one person spends their time. The toxicity comes from people expecting a high level of dedication from each other instead of simply themselves.
If the author is happy with what they're doing, good for them, as long as they're not applying the same set of expectations to others.
> I see countless tweets every day about how "hustle culture" is toxic, and they anger some part of me every time.
And there's your problem. The "culture" changes you so that you see things through the lens of this culture. As you identify with it, then you become that position vs others who don't view the world as you do. It's you who hustles and those who don't. The separation can degrade into a toxic mindset where you see yourself as some sort of doer king, and frustrated why other people can't appreciate it and you expect people who work for you to work like you do.
You can work your ass off without identifying with that work. As soon as it becomes "culture" then you're on the wrong track.
Hustle culture IMO is when you impose long working hours to your employees, when you judge your coworkers by their working time or do not give a promotion to someone because he has a healthy work-time balance.
It's not about how much you work.
I've been working hard at times, I still do from time to time but I never impose it to anyone. And when I'm in one of these periods when I push myself I do extra care of not showing it; not pushing code out of normal hours, not sending slack or emails,...
Because even showing you're doing it is already a step in the bad direction, it normalizes it, and ultimately create this hustle culture.
It's one thing when your hustling is primarily to your own benefit. It's another thing when your hustling is primarily benefiting someone else. It's the latter that's arguably the source of hustle culture's toxicity.
> I derive happiness from working towards an enormous goal.
Why an “enormous” goal? Does that come from a place of hubris. Do you push other people towards your enormous goal even at the cost of relationships and health?
And how much does you “enormous” goal actually benefit society?
Yeah that's the real disconnect with this mindset. Like, are you even doing something important, something worth the effort? In most cases, probably not.
Another anecdote: I've kept meticulous data on my own productivity for years, which has allowed me to run self-tests on the effects of sleep, exercise, substances, etc.
One thing I've consistently found is that the harder and longer I work, the more I get done -- without bound, and without burnout rebounds. It's just all shockingly linear.
It doesn't feel linear: the difference between working 12 hours versus 14 hours in 1 day can be excruciating. But when I step back and look at the graph over longer time spans, the "time spent" vs "how much I got done" relationship appears to be pretty consistent.
TLDR: I've personally convinced myself that "hustle culture" works for me.
It sounds like it sucks that this individual has conflated their personal subjective feeling of happiness with a phenomenon from Twitter called “hustle culture.”
I’m personally not entirely clear on what the exact definition of hustle culture is, but if it’s a buzzword from social media that defines people’s entire lives that doesn’t sound… ideal. I personally can’t imagine reading such a generic sounding phrase — written by a stranger that certainly wasn’t talking about me — and feeling a call to action to defend my lifestyle in public.
This testimony puts even Alexey Stakhanov, hero of socialist labor to shame. I find it inspirational, and will work even harder for the company! Maybe I can work hard enough to put another penny of dividend on each stock for the stockholders. Goodbye friends, goodbye family, goodbye gym, goodbye daylight, the backlog is full of user stories and I have work to do!
Edit: worth stating that “hustling” is almost never necessary. It can be a ploy to convince workers to save the venture money by doing extra work. It can be a tactic of control, or superiority. One thing is certain: it’s gross.