
I Have No Idea What “Hard Work” Means - paulpauper
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/i-have-no-idea-what-hard-work-means
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ncmncm
What he means is "I have no idea what _you_ mean when you say 'hard work'".
Anyway it is probably not what he might mean, and even he means different
things at different times.

The meaning he and we probably find most objectionable is that the speaker is
really telling us that he or she has earned the state of privilege they enjoy,
and that others who don't didn't. It is true that this is invariably BS --
they never work nearly so long or hard as any janitor you encounter. Working
hard on your own behalf is nothing particularly admirable, anyway.

I have a half-sister who, with her husband, re-roofs houses in disaster areas
every summer, unpaid. I would be happy to hear about how hard they worked, but
they feel no need to tell me.

~~~
perl4ever
"they never work nearly so long or hard as any janitor you encounter"

I remember thinking when I was cleaning up construction sites that cleaning
the inside of a finished office building must be a job you needed connections
or experience to get.

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ncmncm
Should I take this to mean it was light work? Lucky you.

But not the same as a janitor's.

~~~
perl4ever
I'm not sure what you are referring to as "it".

What is tolerable or enjoyable work depends on what you are accustomed to and
other factors. Would you rather clean toilets, deal with an irate customer, be
on a rooftop in the summer sun, be on an open platform ten stories in the air,
or wade in some unknown sludge? Some people have issues with a different
subset of those than others, so there isn't a strict ordering.

My point was that it's odd to me to hold being a janitor up as some kind of
extreme end of a spectrum. It's not what you do when all else fails. It's not
the thing that people with no skills and no experience are automatically
assigned to.

However, if a day labor place sends someone to sweep up a warehouse, I
wouldn't call that being a janitor. Maybe some would.

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rogerkirkness
Realizing that diligence was a middle class status signaling value that did
not apply in capital class circles was an interesting lesson. Elon Musk
constantly talks about how you have to work twice as much as other people,
where as Jeff Bezos is pretty open about going in for about 6-7 hours a day.
Who is right? The answer is either one, they have different values, that hard
work is subjective, and that you should just do what you want and what works.
Hard work is the original virtue signaling in a growth economy. It says, I'm
important, I'm needed, etc. But in practice it often means diligence which is
often not correlated to effectiveness in most (not all) fields of knowledge
work.

~~~
bigred100
Surely a rational person would care about doing a solid day’s work while
maintaining their health, sanity, relationships etc.

~~~
Aeolun
Why is that rational? If I go into the office and spend a day looking at cat
pictures (which certainly makes me happier than attending the endless
meetings) I get paid just as much.

~~~
bigred100
I can’t imagine this is a good long-term career idea unless it’s something you
do only on occasion when you’re mentally exhausted or something.

~~~
Aeolun
I think it’s just that I believe that in any company big enough to have
endless meetings it’s fairly possible to put in (almost) no work and still fly
under the radar.

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perl4ever
Only if you can stay awake in the meetings. For me, meetings where I don't
participate and nothing concerns me are like a soporific.

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burgerzzz
The author made some interesting arguments, but they lost me with their
insistent jabbing at the upper management man cheating on his wife, the racist
divorcee dad, the boring date, her friends cheating boyfriends, etc. The not-
so-subtle political undertones distract from what I think is an interesting
question.

~~~
Aeolun
I’m confused. How are these things related to political undertones? Prejudice
maybe, but are these more common amongst certain groups?

I thought it added some wry smiles to the story anyway.

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proc0
"I think the issue is that when people say they’ve “worked hard,” they’re
implicitly suggesting superiority"

Yes, you compare it to others who do similar work. Who actually says "I worked
hard... in comparison to anyone who has ever worked.". It's usually you work
hard for that line of work. A software engineer can be changing links and
sipping coffee or pulling 12 hours coding all day. One is doing hard work.
Article seems to be arguing semantics.

~~~
themagician
When someone actually says they “worked hard” it’s usually bullshit, because
people who actually work hard either don’t realize it or are too humble to
admit it. So saying you worked hard is a justification for why you have
something or why you have something and someone else doesn’t.

Most people who make a lot of money don’t actually work very hard by virtue of
the fact that most individual wealth comes from capital, not labor. Maybe you
did work hard at some point to get that capital, but that’s also unlikely.
After all, if capital paid out the true value then it wouldn’t exist at all.
So somewhere you either exploited people or natural resources to get that
capital.

Hard work sucks. It almost by definition doesn’t pay well, with few
exceptions.

But we need to justify to ourselves and others why we value different humans
different, and hard work sounds really good. So we invoke it to justify to
ourselves, mostly, why we are superior to others.

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tuesdayrain
>people who actually work hard either don’t realize it or are too humble to
admit it.

This is a completely arbitrary way to gatekeep the concept of "working hard".

~~~
themagician
It’s really not. It’s just how it is.

~~~
mikelyons
"it's just how it is" this is devilry, relative-truth. Not absolute.

~~~
themagician
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.”

------
Aeolun
Would it be worse to say that I don’t consider myself to have ever worked
particularly hard in life?

It comes easily, I’m just smart (enough) and lazy.

Then again, I’m writing this while walking home from work at 8:40pm, so there
is some sort of disconnect here.

~~~
saghm
> Would it be worse to say that I don’t consider myself to have ever worked
> particularly hard in life?

> It comes easily, I’m just smart (enough) and lazy.

I think the key thing that people object to in the "hard work" arguments
(which is also present in your "it comes easily, I'm just smart" assertion) is
the (perhaps unintentional) implication that one has complete control of the
outcomes one experiences. Diminishing the role of beneficial circumstances
beyond one's control comes across as saying that people who are less fortunate
must deserve it in some sense because there can't possibly be factors beyond
their control that contributed to their misfortune.

None of this is to say that the hypothetical people who state the value of
their "hard work" _didn't_ work hard, or that you're _not_ smart! It's just
important to recognize that there likely were some beneficial factors along
the way that if you hadn't encountered, you might be one of the less fortunate
people yourself.

~~~
Aeolun
Oh, for sure. Had I been born somewhere else I’m not sure these traits would
have resulted in the same outcome.

I guess people don’t feel the need to comment on circumstances beyond their
control exactly because they can’t do anything about them though. Saying you
worked hard is nice, appending “and I’m still only here because I started 2
leagues behind” is not.

Neither is “but I’m here mostly because I was born in the first world to a
fairly well off family”.

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werber
For me "hard work" is when I'm doing something I don't enjoy for more time
then I agreed to. That's an incredible privilege, but I still feel like shit
when it happens.

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cafard
The example of Brett Kavanaugh is curious. Yes, his high school is focused on
getting its students into good colleges--that's why it is Georgetown Prep, not
Georgetown Something Else. It is also focused on preparing them to get through
those colleges creditably, and part of that is teaching them how to manage a
workload. The husband of a sometime co-worker taught science at a well-
thought-of state university, and said that more kids did poorly from lack of
work habits than from lack of smarts.

Does getting your algebra homework done on time count as hard work on the same
level as digging ditches? No. Does it count as work of a sort? Yes.

~~~
ForHackernews
You're not in disagreement with the author.

> Any job that requires intense physical labor is on the list of “for sure,
> you worked hard,” as is anything that involves great emotional and
> psychological resilience, such as social work. But after that it gets
> tricky. How about someone who founded a trading company or a real estate
> agency in the 1980s, riding the wave of the business-friendly Reagan years?
> They’ve worked for decades, undoubtedly with some late nights or unusual
> hours. But is that the same as getting black lung? What about someone who
> just worked a fairly normal 40 hour week, from age 18 to 65? Is that “hard
> work?” What about someone whose job is creative and enjoyable? Is that also
> “hard work?” How do we measure this, exactly? Can it be done by number of
> hours? Intensity of work? Sacrifices made? Cubits of human suffering?

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akhilcacharya
I was thinking about this topic earlier this week. I think it's really
misleading to defend your accomplishments with "hard work", especially given
not all "hard work" is the same. I "worked hard" but have gotten a fraction
for it than many folks I know. I have also "struggled a lot less" than quite a
few folks I know while getting better results. It's ultimately a meaningless
dodge.

Maybe success shouldn't need to be defended. I'm not sure.

~~~
mav3rick
You can work hard by "banging your head against the door" every minute. That
doesn't mean it was the right work. When you say you worked hard or I said I
did, there is no context or absolute scale to see what we meant.

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rowanG077
This article just seems like someone who is obsessed about how hard other
people work. I really don't get it. Why not do a job the best you can handle?
Maybe that involves "hard work" however you yourself define it or maybe it
doesn't. It really doesn't matter.

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nyxtom
This is what hard work and success means to me:

To the extent that you are attempting to manifest your potential, and
directing your aim such that you are successful in raising the bar through a
meta-goal - i.e. attempting to orient yourself through a range set of goals
with the overall meta-goal being life itself.

Once you have actually determined that you want things to be better, you can
then proceed to direct your actions and judgements appropriately. Perform a
regular evaluation period where you can determine whether: a) your goals are
in fact what you should be aiming at, b) whether your actions are
appropriately working in your favor, and c) whether you are making the correct
judgements. This process of evaluation is truth telling in itself.

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agota
It doesn't matter how hard you worked, what matters is the results you
produced.

For example, she talks about not understanding what "hard work" meant in
college, but who cares? Did you get the grades you wanted? That's all that
matters.

It's the same in the "real world", it doesn't matter how hard you work at
something, what matters are the results. Did you get what you wanted?

I don't really understand what is the point of pontificating over the meaning
of "hard work". Is this some echo of the protestant worldview?

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perilunar
I was agreeing with the author all the way to the end, when she wrote:

“And once we stop playing this pointless game of comparing how hard we all
work, we can start asking the real question of when we’re going to start being
compensated fairly for it.”

I don’t believe there is such a thing as fair compensation. No one ‘deserves’
anything, and work has no intrinsic value in and of itself. It’s just a market
place full of people haggling.

~~~
andrekandre
> It’s just a market place full of people haggling.

then (to me) the question becomes: is this what we really want? and is there
any alternative to this that works?

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credit_guy
If the author worked just a tiny bit harder, he would've written a shorter
essay.

I myself am a lazy guy, didn't finish reading it.

I wonder if hard work is zero sum ...

~~~
jbarberu
Clearly too lazy to figure out the he's a she...

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karmakaze
I for one enjoy working hard from time to time. Like it back when finishing
shrink-wrapped software to ship and at startups when iterating quickly to find
product market for. Even in my office job we do have feature releases which
are mini-marathons and fun in perhaps a similar way.

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elindbe2
It's true that I probably don't work any harder than the subsistence farmer in
India living on $2 a day. Does that imply I should start donating all my extra
income to them? Until what point? Until I'm living on $2 per day as well?

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mikekchar
The author seems to be saying that people who say they have worked hard
deserve their privileges (of wealth or influence or both). I think the author
hasn't thought it through enough. Virtually everybody believes they deserve
what they have. Usually they believe they deserve more (and often they are
angry that they don't have it). It doesn't matter how much they have or what
they did to get it.

The rest is just justification. It's often not hard work that's the
justification. Does the offspring of a rich parent "deserve" their parent's
wealth? It will be a rare potential recipient that doesn't believe this.

Maybe "hard work" is a common justification, but I think it's probably the
justification that is common in the author's circle. Saying, "You don't work
hard compared to X" is such a terrible argument because the very next thing
the person will say is, "But my work is _more valuable_ ". And if you say,
"But your work is not as valuable as X" it will be rebuffed with, "But my work
is more rare and therefore deserving of greater recognition". Or... You can go
on forever.

The point is that people believe that they deserve what they have, even if
they have orders of magnitude more than other people. People who are
relatively well off still generally believe that they are worth more than what
they receive. That's just how people are. You are not ever going to convince
the average person otherwise because it is important to their self image.

How many times do you hear people expressing outrage or dismay that "at the
very least I should have X", when in fact it's just an arbitrary line in the
sand.

I even catch myself thinking that way. I'm a senior software developer with 30
years of experience. I _should_ be able to afford a house and 2 cars and to
raise a family with kids and have occasional vacations in exotic places. If I
happen to go out to dinner and spend $250 on a single meal once in a while, I
_shouldn 't have to_ think about whether I can afford it. _I 'm a senior
developer with 30 years of experience_ for goodness sake. The world is pretty
freaking broken if I can't have at least that!

Right?

And there hundreds (?)... thousands (?)... Well, I don't know, but probably
more than I can count... people who will be looking to find some food tonight.
Any food. It doesn't matter what. Probably they can't write computer programs.
So I guess they don't deserve the food as much as me.... Is that what I'm
saying?

But I'll tell you what. That line of reasoning isn't going to fool me! I
refuse to feel bad for what I have, because I worked hard for it. I deserve
it.

And that's the whole thing in a nutshell.

~~~
diffeomorphism
No, the author is saying the opposite.

> Virtually everybody believes they deserve what they have.

Yes, and they claim that they got there through "hard work", which is totally
unrelated to how hard they worked and just short for "I deserve it more than
*".

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peter303
narcissistic millennial

~~~
diffeomorphism
Prime example of what the article is criticizing.

> I think the issue is that when people say they’ve “worked hard,” they’re
> implicitly suggesting superiority. I’m deserving of reward, not like those
> people who are lazy (“those” people being immigrants, poor people, liberal
> arts majors, whoever it is you seek to contrast yourself against).

I think we can add "narcissistic millenial" to "those".

~~~
dawg-
Is it possible to be proud of your own hard work, without necessarily making a
contrast to others who you perceive as "lazy'? So goes the old saying, "The
true test of character is what you do when nobody is watching".

Sure there are plenty of people who wear their "hard work" as a badge. But
that isn't everbody.

~~~
diffeomorphism
Sure, the article starts with those and then focuses on the "plenty of
people".

The person I was replying to however is clearly among those making a contrast.

