[HN Gopher] Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork? ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-09 23:00 UTC)