A Love Affair With Hustle Culture
A New Generation’s struggle with a country’s love of work.
America is officially the hardest working nation on the planet. Not the most efficient. Not the highest-earning per hour worked. Just the longest working nation on the globe. To be fair, there is nothing wrong with working hard. But at what point does our workaholic, hustle culture become plain exploitation?
When I talk about the hustle culture, I am talking about defining one’s life around work performance and the constant pursuit of the grind. Think entrepreneur and walking Millenial motivator, Gary Vaynerchuk.
While there is nothing wrong with working hard in pursuit of one’s passion, our country’s love of the hustle is leading us to the point of burnout. Whatever your hustle is, however you make money, it seems mainstream to focus on the money you make. So naturally, the hustlers strive to make work their entire life, and businesses are pushing the narrative to capitalize on a nation of grind happy workers.
Take for example the astonishing rise and just as spectacular fall of WeWork under the leadership of co-founder and former CEO, Adam Neumann. WeWork — the real estate company renting shared workspace to tech startups, turned lifestyle brand — was promised by most experts to be the next big thing in business. At its height, the company reached a $47 billion valuation before its failed IPO. While not a typical example of how business is done, they do embody the mindset of the longest working nation on the planet.
We Hustle
“Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds.”
In 2017, WeWork bought its first property, launched a fitness brand, acquired a coding academy, partnered with Airbnb, planned to start a school, and acquired Meetup. A busy year for the company, summed up by its attempts to invade every aspect of daily life.
The We brand took diversification to another level, attempting to shatter any separation between work and life. But their actions were not completely unforeseen. WeWork’s attempts to privatize every aspect of personal life and the core of the hustle culture, both assume success is directly tied to the degree that one’s work has become their life.
From the One37pm About Us page that states, “The current state of entrepreneurship is bigger than career,” and countless entrepreneur mantras just like it, we are told there is beauty in the rat race.
Workers are constantly being added to the hustle pushing ranks. And as their numbers swell, the message gets louder. That we should all embrace a life filled with round-the-clock work because that’s what all the successful ones do — because it’s the secret key to happiness.
Over Worked and Over-Rated
Let’s assume most Americans are not like the 25% of those surveyed in the MidAmerica Nazarene University study, currently working their dream job. What’s the average worker’s incentive for the active advocation for a country of workaholics?
David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp thinks, “The vast majority of people beating the drums of hustle-mania are not the people doing the actual work. They’re the managers, financiers, and owners.”
While the managers, financiers, and owners often work longer hours than the average staff employee, Hansson’s remarks speak to the real winners in a culture of overwork. The company, and subsequently those whose compensation is tied directly to the performance of the company become the beneficiaries.
WeWork’s mission statement reads, “Create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living.” However, their actions told a different story.
The We Company did not empower its employees by reinventing our labor system. There was no shortened workweek to allow employees time to make their living. Instead, the We Brand took its queue from the likes of Google — feeding, massaging, and caring for employees to keep their life from distracting from the office. They succeeded in making a company where people made a life of work.
At the end of the company’s spending spree, WeWork was left devalued and defamed. But ultimately, Adam Neumann was enriched on the backs of the overworked employees and the now dwindling faith in their potential.
But exploitation by executives is nothing new. So why is it still so hard to separate the reasonable work hours from the personal lives we all crave?
The Dilemma
On the one hand, the digital revolution has allowed for more work to be done and made it possible for the bulk of our business to be done on the go. Though, it also makes the separation from the office more delicate than merely driving away. In our world of constant access, artificial limits must be deliberately set based on the realistic.
However, the decision is not clear cut and not always taken cautiously. When executives like Telsa’s co-founder and CEO Elon Musk suggest 80 sustained hours of work per week, it is hard to imagine similar companies’ culture will trend toward a stronger work-life balance.
It is hard to argue against the sentiments of hustle when successful executives praise inhuman levels of work ethic as the sole reason for company success. Like Marissa Meyer, former chief executive of Yahoo, commenting 130-hour workweeks are possible “if you’re strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom.”
Aidan Harper, the creator of a European workweek-shrinkage campaign called 4 Day Week, argues that this type of hustle centric thinking “creates the assumption that the only value we have as human beings is our productivity capability — our ability to work, rather than our humanity.”
Although studies have shown that longer work hours correlate to increased levels of inefficiency, anxiety, and depression, working 60+ hours is the reality for very many Americans today.
But growing descent could indicate a coming changing of tides.
A Proper Rescheduling
“Create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living.”
While the technological boom has lead to demands for greater commitments to work, it has also provided the means to pull ourselves away from our hustle minded culture.
When Microsoft’s Japan division switched to a 4-day workweek, it claimed a rise in productivity of 40% and a decrease in electricity costs by 23%.
Still unproven as a standard practice, compressed workweeks are a growing trend. Schedules of 40 hours squeezed into 4-day weeks are offered by one-third of organizations, and four-day workweeks of 32 hours or less are offered by 15%, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Even Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, has considered moving toward reduced hours.
The mounting shift of schedule could indicate a switch in values brought on by Millenial infusion into the workforce. Or perhaps it is a management lead attempt at cost-cutting. Either way, if the trend continues, we may come to redefine what our culture defines as success and change the way we hustle.
We are living within a time of changing values. As the next generations begin to come into their own, they can redefine the values of a country.
The once gold standard of American adulthood, the conventional symbols of wealth — such as owning a home, living without debt, and a college degree — have proven to be an elusive target for many Millenials. People are hustling past exhaustion to get what society has deemed a necessity for a complete life. But this has begun to prove a barometer of the past.
Anne Helen Peterson writes, “boomers had the golden age of capitalism; Gen-X had deregulation and trickle-down economics. And millennials?” We have inherited the standards of a richer past, with far less wealth. Perhaps this is why we are still reluctant to let go of the hustle harder mentality that proved successful for a previous generation in a much different world than we live now.
In the new technological age, it is up to us to decide how our work-life balance breaks out. Let’s keep in mind what our true values are when making the decision.
