
Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't) - sweedy
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2013/11/26/work-hard-you-ll-get-there-eventually-hint-no-you-won-t.aspx
======
tsunamifury
Cooperate-Cooperate, Betray-Cooperate, or Betray-Betray.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_game](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_game)

In the golden era we imagine the corporate worker relations was a cooperate
cooperate game, producing hard work, good will, and strong meaningful
community for everyone.

Then corporations realized they needed workers to cooperate while reserving
the right to betray them (layoffs, terminations etc) because as the market
grew more cut throat due to everyone's success, a company needed to stay lean
and competitive.

Workers are now growing wise to this and we are entering a betray-betray era.
Corperations are working to force cooperation while reserving the right to
betray (see google/apple/facebook engineering cartel) but workers in high
demand fields are becoming savvy as they can use their skills to go anywhere

The problem is the net result of the betray-betray game is assumed to be net
lower than the other strategy to play the game, causing the community at large
to gain less over multiple games.

To me this is the net result of cynicism: damaging the community in the name
of optimization. Capitalism as practiced is a pain-optimization machine and
until we choose to risk playing the game as a cooperative endeavor, it will
never improve.

~~~
scythe
Not everything is the prisoner's dilemma. There's no reason -- at least not in
your post -- that self-motivated individualism can't be efficient; such ideas
were advocated by e.g. Hayek and Friedman (to say nothing of real
macroeconomics). If my time is better spent somewhere else because they offer
me more money, maybe that's because the work I do there will produce more
value for the world overall.

In other words your argument is circular: you assume that individualism is
bad, and you conclude that capitalism (which starts and ends with
individualism) is bad.

Furthermore have workers and corporations always competed cf. unionization in
the 1920s and so forth; in general this has been considered an overall benefit
(working fewer hours --> quality of life and education).

~~~
tormeh
You assume that your wage is proportional to the value you deliver to the
world. Bad. Not correct. Try again. There is a positive correlation on the
population level, but on the individual level the relationship is tenuous at
best.

~~~
scythe
It's not relevant to my argument. The point was that _in some cases,
individualism can be efficient_. A didactic example is meant to be recognized
as such and not attacked for technicalities in its formulation; rigor was not
here the goal. Note, for example, the use of "maybe". But congratulations for
irrelevant nitpicking, I guess.

~~~
tormeh
Sorry about that. I thought the "maybe" was sarcastic.

Anyway, the parent's point seems to be that individualism is a strategy that
is optimal for a single person, but suboptimal for society. The reason is that
what activity maximizes your financial return does not generally maximize the
return for society as a whole. Individualism is therefore not optimal. A
specific example would be a world that had no crime and therefore no need for
security, law enforcement etc. Obviously a lot more efficient than a world
with crime. However, since stealing would be free of consequence,
individualism dictates that you should steal in this hypothetical world.
Everything may not be a prisoner's dilemma, but most is. I don't see how
that's nitpicking.

------
hagbardgroup
The new system is not 'better' than the old system, and is probably
significantly worse. While it's true that Welch's advice is no longer valid,
it's because the legal, financial, and monetary environment has changed so
much since the heydays of GE.

My grandfather retired a millionaire after working as a basic GE accountant
for his entire postwar life. So as far as he was concerned, GE treated him
well, and it treated his family well enough that my mother still remembers the
Christmas parties that the company threw in upstate New York for their genuine
human warmth.

When I compare how GE treated my grandfather versus how my father was treated
by the companies that he worked for (taking the ambitious, go-getter advice),
I am struck by how poorly he was served by both that and the overall cultural
structure of the United States. My grandfather survived a Nazi prison camp for
the US Government, and his weeks of eating grass soup paid off.

So to people saying that Welch's advice was psychopathic bullshit, I say sucks
to you. Grandpa worked 9-5 for Jack, was not a particularly ambitious man, and
came out way ahead in return for his loyalty. While surely this did not work
for everyone, it did for enough of the people for stories like this to be
common.

My perspective is entirely different -- because the US no longer rewards
loyalty in either the public or private spheres. It is in fact punished, as
this writer notes. How exactly can you build a company that lasts for longer
than a relative eyeblink when every person is looking out for #1, and expects
to be stabbed in the ass by everyone around them?

LinkedIn is a pain in the ass. Propagandizing for yourself to eke out a good
living and career hopping all over the country is a pain in the ass. Both
activities are tangential to producing profitable work over a long period of
time. Every jackass who wants to get a VP position has to be a hot air spewing
'thought leader' now. This is all wasteful activity that defeats the entire
economic purpose of firms.

The modern cynicism is corrosive to our long term prospects as a country, even
if it is correct individual advice for the current environment. It will not
survive, because this country will not survive as a single entity given such
broken incentives and cultural mores.

~~~
justinmk
> because the US no longer rewards loyalty in either the public or private
> spheres

The comfort of 1950s US was an accident of the WW2 windfall resulting from our
happy position as the creditor for most of Europe. Pointing to that accident
as a model for future progress is childish.

~~~
FD3SA
That, in combination with the ~50% tax rate on income and capital gains. Turns
out, when you redistribute wealth, consumption increases so rapidly that the
economy takes off.

That no longer is much of an option, as wealthy individuals have not only
managed to reduce capital gains to ridiculously low levels, but also
diversified their holdings throughout the globe. This makes taxation a poor
tactic, as capital will just flow to tax havens as the rate increases.

Turns out that feudalism is the natural state of man, and reprieves from it
are quite temporary anomalies.

For those interested in details, Thomas Piketty's _Capital_ is an excellent
reference on the subject. Also, the movie _Inequality for All_ is a far more
approachable presentation based on the book.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Naaah. The post-war revival in the economy was largely a result of having
dismantled the FDR New Deal and its attendant control economy. No, not the
Social Security part or anything like that - the part where politicians and
regulators thought competition was _bad_ for consumers, and spent the decade
propping up their preferred cronies with price controls and selective bailouts
and other such nonsense. With the politicians, of course, receiving _ample_
campaign contributions in return. Taxes still damage the economy, it just
turns out there are things that can damage an economy more than taxes. :)

Ah, the New Deal, when our leaders thought they could lead us out of famine
and into prosperity by burning crops. Birthplace of big-agribusiness! Et
cetera.

~~~
djur
Most of the price control/cartel parts of the New Deal were partly or entirely
dismantled before the war. Of course, a new set of price controls were set up
during wartime, but those were not New Deal programs.

What survived from the New Deal were the Keynesian stimulus programs, which
were generally very successful, lasted through the war and up through the
'70s, and some to this day.

------
zw123456
The reason that successful people tend to give such useless advice about how
to be successful is that most of them do not recognize how much of their
success is due to luck. There is a tendency of humans to minimize the degree
to which luck contributes to their success. The also tend to minimize how
various advantages they were born with (social status etc.). Basically
successful people want to believe that their success is 100% due to their
brilliance and ability and anyone could replicate it if only they worked as
hard as they did. When confronted with trying to explain how they became
successful, they resort to all sorts of silly sounding platitudes.

------
DanielBMarkham
Yeah, after reading about a dozen of these over the years, it's just
depressing.

Look at it this way: success in life is 1/3 working hard, 1/3 working smart,
and 1/3 being lucky.

You might ditch the first two and get _really_ lucky. Or not. Your best bet is
to do all three. Even then, guess what, little snowflake? You're not that
special, and you may only have bad luck.

So what? If you're doing something you have passion about, or if you ever grow
up enough to learn to create your own passion as you go along, _you 're going
to be doing the first two things anyway._ So this isn't about some secret
formula to get what you want; this is about just doing something more
fulfilling in life than taking up space and seeking to self-stimulate. Might
be worthwhile. Who knows?

Yep, the old days of "I'll be loyal to the company and the company will be
loyal to me" are gone. But that was just a tiny piece of the big picture.
Simply because some of the details shift around doesn't mean the basics have
changed that much. Good grief.

ADD: The more I think about this article, the more it bugs me. So the advice
is don't try to impress your boss because he won't be around long? How about
just trying to be a pleasant, hard-working, reliable person that other people
find enjoyable to work with, boss or not? Or do we sulk around wondering why
we should do anything at all unless there's something directly in it for us?

------
qwerta
I found that it is very important to have enough free capital (energy, money)
to catch opportunities when they come. If you work constantly at limit of your
strength and have no free energy to even explore, it is practically equivalent
to being broke.

------
sarreph
There's no real alternative offered here.

I understand there's a whole 'open' and 'small' world out there and I can
learn lessons from my peers, but if I'm not supposed to be 'working hard for
my boss' in the modern corporate world, what am I supposed to be doing to 'get
there eventually'?

~~~
tejay
This appears to be an older post, but I think what the original author meant
was that hard work alone isn't a sufficient condition for success (I'd argue
it is a necessary one, though).

The real answer is there probably isn't a sufficient condition for success,
but hard work in pursuit of your own goals (rather a manager's) increases the
likelihood of a positive outcome.

Still, I'd have gone a step further. 'Career' is such a false construction. Go
do fun shit and get really good at it. Maybe I'm naively optimistic, but if
you're really good at something, it's pretty easy to get paid (a lot) for it.

~~~
danbruc
Hard work is not important, good results are. That's a very different thing.

~~~
jes
I think hard work is a necessary precursor to good results. Although, that
hard work may not be of the kind most people associate with office work of the
past.

~~~
danbruc
Fair point, hard work is not well-defined. I interpreted and meant it in the
sense of throwing a lot of working hours at the problem. And I think this is
not necessary for good results and may actually be counterproductive in some
cases.

------
smtddr
Here's how I think of it.

Smashing your shoulder against a heavy metal vault door as hard as you can
over and over, hoping someone at the other side will eventually hear you and
open the door is a waste of time. It results in burn-out with nearly no hope
of progress.

Instead, you should examine the door and try to open it yourself with a very
deliberate attempts of sound reasoning based on where the weak points of the
door may be. And after awhile, you may even discover that you can walk around
it... or maybe that door isn't blocking the path you should be on to begin
with.

------
charlieflowers
Warning -- this article (while it has some valid points) should trigger your
"bullshit radar." Why?

It's very heavy on the "this guy is old so he couldn't possibly know what we
need." And the problem is, that's a message that strongly appeals to the
_biases_ we on this site are likely to have.

Readers of this site tend to be young, smart, and highly motivated. Anything
that smells like "I don't need lessons from the previous generation; I already
have the right instincts because of my youth" will automatically appeal to us
because it would be very exciting if it were true.

That alone doesn't make it false. But it means your internal "I better check
myself for objectivity" flag should get triggered. Beyond that, though, look
at how much of the article's content is devoted to this theme.

Probably half or more of the sentences are spent on this idea. When you're
writing for public consumption, you have to learn to be terse and efficient.
All those words spent on "geez, just look how old this guy is" are expensive.
But the author deemed that the most effective use of words, because _he is
intentionally trying to play on your biases_.

When someone is intentionally playing on your biases, look out. You might be
having smoke blown up your ass (which the Surgeon General does not recommend).

------
bitcycle
I fully agree.

One must seriously consider his or her professional trajectory and major
milestones. Companies these days don't allow for upward movement unless you're
willing to spend a decade playing nice with the right people and consistently
over-delivering. On the other hand, changing jobs from company to company
likely benefits the employee much more by allowing him or her to enter in to a
new role that they are fully qualified for. The same goes for pay, even if its
a similar role. The primary goal of a Company is to pay the employee as little
as possible in order to get the most out of them fulfilling their duties in
the role that they were hired to fill. Having the boat rocked by folks
changing roles (upward movement) or increasing salaries is something that each
Company tries hard to avoid.

------
gummify
Jack presents good advice that still is an important part of culture in
certain sectors and within certain types of businesses if you want to move up
the corporate ladder. He says to work hard but also to work smart, I don't
think he's saying number of hours worked or level of brown nosing positively
correlates to return on efforts or dollars. You must have a career strategy
and not just be a hamster running around a wheel. Work hard at that strategy
and whether it means being promoted up the ladder every year in the same
company or to deliver on something groundbreaking and then exiting within a
couple years or less. In other news, I wonder how Jack and Tim Ferriss would
get along.

------
michaelochurch
It's easier to call out bad and outdated advice (Welch's) than to offer good
advice, which the OP doesn't.

The problem with Welch's advice is that it's what successful people _say_ ,
not what they do. You should pay attention to what unsuccessful people _say_
and _know_ (they're the ones who know the organization's true character) but
what the successful people _do_. Take knowledge from the losers, but copy the
actions (often unknowingly competent actions) of the winners.

I'm not a VC, haven't completed an exit, nor am I an executive or technical
architect at a brand-name company. At age 30 and an IQ over 150, not being in
a decision making role is failure. While I'm OK by objective standards, you
should count me as unsuccessful, because I should be leading with my talent
and I'm not, because I've picked some terrible startups. You should take
advice from someone like me in terms of what I _say_. You shouldn't do what I
_do_ , because it obviously hasn't worked. Cognitively, I understand how to
play politics; in the field, I'm bad at it.

Likewise, you should ignore what Jack Welch says but watch what he does. You
should listen to what I say, but not copy my footwork. That's
counterintuitive, for sure, but unknowing competence is superior to learned,
analytical insight when you're in the field.

Basic point: what successful people _say_ about the career game is the
socially acceptable bullshit (work hard, over-deliver, never lie, be a team
player) that has nothing to do with how it actually works. If they were the
type who'd talk about how the career game actually works, they wouldn't be
successful. They'd be pissing too many people off (like I do) by telling too
many ugly truths.

Welch says: _Don 't panic. Just get in there and start thinking big. If your
boss asks you for a report on the outlook for one of your company's products
for the next year, you can be sure she already has a solid sense of the
answer. So go beyond being the grunt assigned to confirm her hunch. Do the
extra legwork and data-crunching to give her something that really expands her
thinking -- an analysis, for instance, of how the entire industry might play
out over the next three years._

Terrible fucking idea. Executives don't see a young grunt trying to work on
the big picture as "initiative". (I learned this at Google when I pointed to a
superior G+ Games strategy.) They see it as a challenge to their turf. They
hit back hard, and they have all the power. It doesn't end well.

In reality, overperformance is a lot more dangerous than underperformance.
Underperformance gives you about a 30% chance of being fired within 12 months,
usually in the context of a layoff that affords severance. If you underperform
smartly (and focus on building contacts and skills for your next gig) you'll
have plenty of time and energy in reserve to tackle any consequences.
Overperformance gives you a 5% chance of being tapped as protege of someone
important and a 95% chance of being fired (usually with a dishonest but
humiliating "performance" case being manufactured; if you're a star, your job
duties will be rearranged so you can't perform) inside of 4 months. Not
fucking worth it.

In general, this is even more true of VC-funded startups than large companies,
so I don't want to hear the "startups are the antidote" retort. The median VC-
funded startup is way more dysfunctional and political than, say, a large
investment bank.

~~~
mildtrepidation
Somehow you've decided that, despite labeling yourself unsuccessful, people
should pay attention to what you say. The only support I see you making for
this is citing your IQ, which is meaningless.

You obviously believe you're telling people things that work, and the attempt
to help is something I'm sure people appreciate. But based on what you're
saying here, either you don't follow that advice, you don't understand it well
enough to apply it correctly, or you do apply it correctly it's actually bad
advice. So unless you're learning from what successful people have _done_ (not
just said), you're offering unproven advice, and even if you are, you're
offering advice you don't seem to understand.

~~~
michaelochurch
I've had a lot of terrible luck. Some of it was no one's fault, most of it was
not my fault. I'll probably be a lot more successful now that I have my shit
together. But when things go bad for you, you learn what people really are in
a way that the ones with charmed lives never really do.

I suppose I'm lucky insofar as I had my bad luck in my 20s, when it was easier
to recover than in one's 50s.

Much knowledge can only be gained through misery and suffering. Since humans
are mostly defective, it's rare that a person who hasn't suffered, been
betrayed, etc. knows how people actually work.

Additionally, understanding how human organizations work is no substitute for
real-time footwork. Ideally, one wants both. I have a wealth of the first
(and, unlike Welch, I'm willing to share what I know) but (unlike your garden
variety corporate psychopath) I'm not good enough at reading people to develop
that "snake sense" for others' weaknesses. In the field, that's also very
valuable, and it's something I never developed.

~~~
ForHackernews
To be fair, your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch
jobs several times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old".

I mean, I get it: There are plenty of people who are less deserving than you
that have been wildly, disproportionately successful. I can understand why
you're envious. But don't kid yourself, most people would kill to have the
supposedly miserable failure of a career that you've had.

~~~
michaelochurch
_your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch jobs several
times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old"._

Nah, that's not what it's about at all. It's definitely not about the salary.
If you're a novelist and you make even a quarter of that number at mid-career,
you're a huge success.

It's about autonomy, importance, reputation, etc. Personal financial stress
(which I have suffered, although most of that was because I picked a bad
startup, thus my fault) is toxic sludge, but the difference between
comfortable and rich means zilch. What does matter is control over one's
destiny, rather than being blown about by others' political games, and having
the resources to implement one's own ideas rather than being a tool in someone
else's box.

Software used to have an R&D flavor, but we've let ourselves become a
colonized, defeated tribe. As a consequence, we have to deal with closed
allocation, project management bullshit ("story points") and constant
political intrusions on the ability to do our work properly.

I've realized (perhaps too late) that it's not my fault, because no one really
has that authority based on technical ability alone. One really does have to
suck it up and play politics. As I get older, I realize that my negative
experiences are ridiculously common. Most people hide away in shame when bad
things happen to them in their careers. I won't. To protect the good, I come
out, throw down and fight.

 _I can understand why you 're envious._

Envy != resentment. I'm not a very envious person, but I take pride in
resenting those with undeserved success. They get into power, make bad
decisions, and it's almost impossible to flush them out. They're a cancer. I'm
the chemo.

Envy is wishing one had another's unfair or undeserved advantage. Resentment
is pushing toward fairness. You're not trying to grab that coveted token or
advantage for yourself (that would be envy) but you're trying to expose its
stupidity and render it meaningless. Envy is an emotion; resentment is an
attitude and somewhat of a social strategy.

My emotions toward the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world (I don't
feel much either way for them, to be honest) are irrelevant. What is relevant
is that they make good anecdotes, and when they embarrass themselves they can
be cast in such a way that they take down other, much more important, targets.
Does Lucas Duplan deserve to be ridiculed more (or less) than any other young
douchebag? Not really. Should we mock him mercilessly if it casts aspersion on
the chickenhawks who backed him? Yes, absolutely.

~~~
jodrellblank
_It 's about autonomy, importance, reputation, etc. [..] the difference
between comfortable and rich means zilch. What does matter is control over
one's destiny, rather than being blown about by others' political games, and
having the resources to implement one's own ideas rather than being a tool in
someone else's box._

Why is that your definition of success?

"Having the resources to implement my own ideas" is daft; I very likely don't
have any (new) ideas worth implementing. How many people have lived since the
early days of the industrial revolution? Call it 20 billion[1]. How many
genuinely useful not too niche machines have been invented and programs
written, not counting the same program reinvented over and over and over. Tens
of thousands? A million? There just aren't enough new things for everyone to
invent.

So instead of new ideas, maybe I/we could reimplement existing ideas - do
something that someone else has done, in our own way. But how is that
significantly different from "being a tool in someone else's box"?

Elon Musk makes cars, he's got control over his own destiny! He's following
his dream! He's not a tool in someone else's box, he's not pushed around by
others political games! That's success!

Wait, he's not pushed around by others' political games? Tesla cars have to
meet all kinds of regulations. Tesla the company does too, for accounting,
finance, taxes, advertising, customer interaction, etc.

The cars have to have pedals and a steering wheel or no customer would be able
to drive them. They have to fit on a road, and behave in common car-like ways
or no customer would have use for them. They have to look like a car or no
customer would recognise what they are or wouldn't want to be seen with one.
They have to be petrol, diesel or battery powered because there isn't anything
else they could be that fits all the lots-of-requirements.

And yet you say "It's not money that makes Elon Musk a success, it's because
he has the freeodm to shape the doors _his_ way!".

But he doesn't have the freedom to shape them his way, he has the freedom to
shape them like car doors and nothing else.

A false sense of freedom is a strange definition of success.

You could find as much limited freedom while working for someone else.

[1]
[http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleH...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx)

~~~
verbin217
You're willfully missing the point and your example illustrates it. The Tesla
X has an extremely unique door design for the rear passengers. Certainly it
has to conform to _some_ requirements. Even if only to satisfy the definition
of the word door. That it also has to adhere to regulations and consumer
demands is irrelevant. Elon Musk had a relatively large degree of freedom,
compared to many engineers at top-down car companies, in deciding how to meet
those demands. You can assert that neither Elon Musk nor the engineers are
entirely free. You could also observe that they exist on opposing ends of a
continuum.

------
youngbenny
Uh, Beavis neoliberalism is cool, huh huh

------
Yuioup
I feel weird reading a piece on career advice by somebody who works at
Microsoft.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Total ad hominem. MS has some great talent, and MS Research does some awesome
things.

~~~
Yuioup
Good point. I should stop making throwaway remarks on HN.

