Hustle culture is dead
We as people have fundamentally changed through the pandemic and the implications of that on work are deep. I know many of you may be actively trying to downsize your relationship to work.
But what does that actually mean for work itself? Because of our pandemic realizations, the troublesome culture of work that has been building since the 1980s is quickly deteriorating.
Hustle culture is dead.
There I said it.
How work got so crappy
In the 1970s, a company’s performance on the stock market was judged largely on its stable growth over the long run. As several financial crises passed, companies were forced to cut costs in the way of layoffs and slashing benefits. But financial pressure only picked up so there was the expectation to perform better with less. The good news was that technology was picking up which allowed workers to do more. And then our work lives fundamentally changed with the laptop and smartphone allowing us to do more at all hours of the day regardless of location.
If it could be done, why not do it?
Once time, in theory, opened up in the workday from tasks automated, there was more work waiting to pour in. The barriers holding back our job started to bend and quickly broke as the sheer force of work rushed in to fill all available crevices. The workday simply became the day. Prioritization became a relic.
Our markets quite literally run on companies creating increasingly unsustainable growth for its shareholders on a quarterly basis, nearly always at the detriment of workers. Many of whom now operate as contractors with few benefits, little protection, and no voice.
How hustle culture dies as the accepted norm
We now have the powerful dual force of the pandemic-changed person at all levels of seniority and Gen-Z entering the workforce speaking loudly to re-write the rules. Both groups, with fresh perspectives, look at the way work has been done for the last 20+ years and say this can’t be right.
They scoff at working long hours.
They ask why busy is a badge of honor.
They can’t understand why we’re arbitrarily asked to sit in a chair for 40 hours a week (or more) when their to-do list of high-impact items was done hours ago.
They want their company to actually care about the planet and the diverse communities of people that live on it. Before they care about profits.
They’re not afraid to push back on out-of-touch executives that insist on doing something the team knows hasn’t worked for five years. Or ever.
They don’t want their life to be bought with crazy compensation. They want fair pay and time to live.
They laugh at the person that’s hanging onto the path they took as the only path to take. Working 80 hours a week and sleeping at the office to ‘earn your stripes’ leads to a definition of success they aren’t interested in pursuing.
This societal shift may take years to play out in the stock market and in the way work gets done. But you can bet that companies are having one of two conversations right now, 1) How do we maintain the status quo or 2) How can we change for the better.
History tends to favor doing the right thing and not hanging onto the way things have always been done.
Hi, I’m Grant. I write Sustain, a weekly newsletter about how to prevent burnout from work based on research and my own experience. It’s a fresh approach called Holistic Burnout Prevention which treats the causes, not the symptoms of burnout. Join me and let’s create a world without burnout. Subscribe >
