[HN Gopher] Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?
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       Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-05-09 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | fungiblecog wrote:
       | Well I don't so I guess that "we" isn't counting me at least
        
       | imheretolearn wrote:
       | Nobody who is somebody became someone through work-life balance -
       | Anonymous
        
         | philmcp wrote:
         | I agree with this for those trying to create their own
         | business.
         | 
         | I disagree for most salaried positions though - soft skills,
         | politics and luck play a huge role
        
       | philmcp wrote:
       | During lockdown I was feeling pretty burnt out myself which got
       | me thinking: why are basically all jobs 9-5, 5 days per week? Why
       | is there no variation on this model?
       | 
       | It annoyed me so much that I decided to create
       | https://4dayweek.io/ - Software Engineering jobs with a better
       | work / life balance
        
         | nceasy wrote:
         | man I just heard about your site few days ago and find it dope.
         | I hope it to have some more data scientist/ML jobs any time
         | soon!
        
       | Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
       | How much do these ultra successful types actually over-work and
       | how much is just posturing to trick the underlings to over-work?
       | 
       | In American Psycho Patrick Bateman has it pretty chill, spending
       | all his working hours on watching TV, reading magazines and
       | talking trash with his peers. I used to think it was just another
       | example of how unhinged he was, but maybe it's a comment on some
       | kind of double standard on workload vs. compensation in the
       | corporate life.
        
         | brutal_chaos_ wrote:
         | That is a great take on it! My take was the higher up you go,
         | the more meaningless the work is. As in paper pusher vs
         | innovator. Though I imagine near to and at C level it may be
         | different.
        
       | aritmo wrote:
       | It's just posturing. The same people who complain all the time,
       | for sympathy.
        
       | pmoriarty wrote:
       | _" The roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the
       | 'Protestant work ethic' in the 16th Century - a worldview held by
       | white Protestants in Europe that made hard work and the quest for
       | profit seem virtuous. Sally Maitlis, professor of organisational
       | behaviour and leadership at the University of Oxford, says that
       | "later, the drive for efficiency that arose out of the Industrial
       | Revolution", as well as the way we prize productivity, have
       | "further embedded the value of consistent hard work, often at the
       | cost of personal wellbeing"._
       | 
       | The roots of the valorization of work may well have been
       | religious, and maybe Christian (though I very much doubt it's
       | exclusively Christian in its origin), but it's definitely spread
       | throughout much of the world, even among the non-religious and
       | even atheist population.
       | 
       | I can't count the number of times I've heard people praise others
       | as "hard working"... in all sorts of contexts, in many different
       | parts of the world, native or immigrant, hard work is praised to
       | the heavens and one of the best things you can say about a person
       | is that they're hard working.
       | 
       | I almost never hear the value of working hard being questioned,
       | except when the subject turns to burnout. Then everybody nods
       | sagely and agrees that overwork is bad.. the next day they go
       | back to praising hard workers.
        
       | Barrin92 wrote:
       | The article paints a picture of this as a universal but it's not
       | really true I think. From my experience, in the German
       | _Mittelstand_ , overwork is not seen as a positive. There are a
       | lot of very productive firms, and there's a huge focus on working
       | 9-5, doing your work well, not being distracted, and then going
       | home and having a life. Staying at work till midnight would be
       | seen as not managing time correctly, neglecting family, being
       | overworked, not in good shape, making mistakes and so on.
       | 
       | I don't even think it's necessarily that popular in American
       | culture any more after the sort of financial excesses of the late
       | aughts. The stereotypical banker who is coked up and accidentally
       | destroys the economy isn't really as cool anymore as he was in
       | the 80s
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-09 23:00 UTC)