Complex Numbers

Hardly Working

I'm a bit hungover right now, so even this concept is giving me a headache.

Why hard work alone isn't enough to get ahead  
We're constantly taught the recipe for getting ahead is to put our heads down and outwork everyone else. But that's not quite right.

Some adages seem custom-made to keep people in their perceived social underclass. Things like "Money can't buy happiness," "The early bird catches the worm," and "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well." But to me the worst offender of all, the one trap they lay to give people the illusion that they might actually escape the clutches of poverty, is "Hard work pays off."

1) It does not, usually and 2) What even is hard work?

Late this summer, UK author Kate Lister had a realisation that resonated. On Twitter, she wrote: “How old were you when you realised your original plan of being really nice, working really hard, & taking on much more than you should in the hope you would be automatically rewarded for this without asking, was totally shit?”

Even earlier than I realized (US spelling) that Twatter is a cesspool. Because Twatter hadn't even been invented yet. Ah, the good old days.

Despite adages and advice that tell people from a young age hard work will get you everywhere, it really won’t, says Jeff Shannon, an executive coach, and author of Hard Work is Not Enough: The Surprising Truth about Being Believable at Work.

"They" tell you that hard work pays off so "they" can profit off your hard work. Consider this: if hard work were all it took to become financially successful, migrant laborers would be multi-millionaires.

Also consider, for example, the work done by Amazon warehouse workers. I'm sure you've all heard the stories: on your feet, hustling around, following algorithms. Indisputably hard work, though I understand some find it fulfilling. (Get it? Fulfillment center? Badumtish.). Is it going to get you promoted to a cushy manager job? No.

And on the other side, as far as I'm concerned, any job that has you sitting on your ass all day cannot be described as "hard work," no matter how diligently you focus on your task(s). It may be rewarding work, it may be your calling, it may drain you emotionally, it may even be difficult, but having done both physically- and mentally-demanding jobs, I can say without doubt that it is not. Hard. Work.

But it’s not enough to take you all the way to the top. “At a certain point you look around and realise, wow, everyone works hard at this level. Expertise and hard work just become the expectation, and will not help you up the ladder.”

And part of that is that it's not a ladder, it's a pyramid. Not necessarily as in "pyramid scheme," but if you have nine colleagues at your lowly mailroom-equivalent level, and one of you is up for a promotion, then nine of you will be stuck in the mailroom. This continues on up the corporate pyramid. And that's not even taking into account that companies don't promote from within like they used to.

To really get ahead, you need to be doing more than just your job. Realisations like Lister’s often come on the heels of watching colleagues with similar (or fewer) abilities soar, while your career stagnates. More often than not, those who rise are the ones willing to politick their way to the top, while you were too busy just working hard to notice you should be working the room.

And while this article started out promisingly, here it veers into "you need to 'work hard' AND get noticed AND also kiss ass."

This flies in the face of societal training that begins as early as primary school, when students are taught that the quiet, hard workers are those most likely to prosper.

They're told that because the corporate world needs people willing and eager to put in the time and effort, and management would prefer if such people didn't raise a fuss. Hence the "quiet" part. Think of the mule with a carrot tied in front of it like the bait on an anglerfish.

In fact, as Shannon notes, hard work alone typically goes unnoticed after a certain point, because everyone around you is working at or about the same level. If you don’t draw attention to yourself in other ways, it’s easy to fade into the background.

And then, as everyone else begins to take notice of this advice, you're once again lost in the crowd, and then you need to find even more ways to (positively) draw attention to yourself, and the escalation continues.

Unsustainably.

In the end, you're back where we started: career advancement is as much luck as anything. You're lucky if your co-workers can't be as self-promoting as you are. You're lucky if management happens to prefer your style over that of your colleagues. You're lucky if you have just the right personality, or know how to fake it. And let's not forget that prejudice, even unconscious prejudice, plays a role. But I'm not wading into that swamp while nursing a hangover.

So, what, am I advocating a lack of "hard work," whatever the fuck that means if you're in, say, engineering design or IT? Well, no, not unless it's going to burn you out. I'm just saying: don't believe the hype. Think of all the people above you in the hierarchy who are partial or complete slack-offs. Did they get where they are by "hard work?" I don't think so. They also didn't get it by being slackers, but it apparently didn't hurt.

Me, I was able to escape that race most of my life, and I am, admittedly, a slacker. But that's as much luck as winning the race is.