Why do so many people believe that hard work will always pay off?

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=Diamonds02]
Yes, I would like to add “having support from the right people” to Dangerosa’s equation.
[/QUOTE]

msmith did not say “having support from the right people”. What he was talking about is the kind of support from people that is EARNED, through hard work, talent, and the effort of making connections.

I don’t know what you’re going through. . .but if this thread and your other one on self-help are any indication, it sounds like you’re a little frustrated with how things are going.

Dangerosa wrote: hard work, talent, and luck" and you want to toss in “having support from the right people”.

I guarantee that if you have enough of the hard work and talent, you don’t need “luck” and you’ll end up EARNING support from the right people. And I don’t mean mommy and daddy getting you a job. I mean your college advisor putting in a word for you with his friend at XYZ, Inc. Or your current boss seeing your talent and hard work and rewarding it with promotion and raises. Or your hard work and talent actually evinced in your small business.

What’s your story? Do you have a degree in a field that is in high demand? Did you impress your professors? Do you impress your boss? Have you TRIED starting a business? Have you expanded your horizons, interest-wise or geographically?

22

[QUOTE=Trunk]
msmith did not say “having support from the right people”. What he was talking about is the kind of support from people that is EARNED, through hard work, talent, and the effort of making connections.

[/QUOTE]

True. Success and hard work breeds more success. Let me give you a real life example:

In high school I up and decided that playing ice hockey looked kind of cool so I decide to try out. For about a year I learned to skate, took lessons and so on and eventually joined the team. Obviously I wouldn’t be that good compared to kids who had been playing since they were eight but I was good enough to develop an interest in it and continued playing in college. A guy on my college team was the rush (recruitment) chairman for his fraternity and was big on getting hockey players in his house so I ended up pledging there. Later, after business school, one of my fraternity brothers hooked me up with a job at the Big 5 (now Big 4) consulting/accounting firm where he worked. My connections at that firm contributed to my taking a job with my current firm.

The point is that success is often the results of many years of hard work, fortunate happenstance and lucky breaks. Since you don’t know when or how those breaks will happen, the best you can do is work hard AND smart. Be open minded. Build relationships with people. Network. Have a well-rounded background. And so on.

23

Growing up, we’re often told two seemingly contradictory things:

  1. Do something marketable; and
  2. Do something you love.

It was a major discovery when I realized that you have to balance these – find things you like that are somewhat marketable.

After I did this, I found work much easier.

You can work really hard, with little success, at something marketable that you really hate. Or at something you really love, with absolutely no marketability.

24

[QUOTE=msmith537]

Look, if you guys really were that hardworking (and smart), you would have graduated from a top school with top grades, several summers of relevent internships and maybe even some extracurricular activities. You would be in a highly competitive job with the best and the brightest in the industry. You would be starting your own businesses or working as some kind of independent consultant. You would be networking with your boss and with people in the industry to keep abreast of opportunities both internal and external.

[/QUOTE]

Your narrow definition of “success” is cliched and tiring.

25

Because to question that leads to more, harder questions about what you are doing with your life and the value of doing it. It really eats at the central foundation of most of our existances. I think that is why you see such strong resistance to even mentioning that “hard work=success” isn’t always a neat and easy explaination of things. You are literally questioning everyone’s very existance and that puts them in a an uncomfortable and very defensive place.

Secondly, that question keeps society in order. If we all started wondering why we are all working to make our bosses and our company’s shareholder’s richer when at best we can expect a small sliver of that, all hell would break loose. Our energies are funneled to be all about us as individuals, taking what we consider our due from the meager rewards the system can get, and trying not to worry about others or question the system too much.

There are other ways of looking at things. For example, in the classic caste system (which is offically banned but still exists to different degrees in different places) in India, each family has a job. Doing this job to the best of your ability (literally, fulfilling your role in life) is a religious requirement just the same as worship services etc. Your goal is not to change jobs or get a better job, but rather to be good and diligant about what you do.

Obviously not a perfect system, but not always the worst system in the world. I heard many many times “In America, you have to be rich to be happy. But in India, you can be happy if you are poor. The poor have a life outside of just being unhappy they are poor and trying to get unpoor.”

26

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Your narrow definition of “success” is cliched and tiring.
[/QUOTE]

You might be right, but for the purposes of this discussion, don’t you think that what he wrote is what the OP is getting at?

I don’t think the OP is talking about “success” in terms of “I live alone in one room apartment with a spartan existence, but I have arrived spiritually and evolved beyond material desires.”

27

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Look, if you guys really were that hardworking (and smart), you would have graduated from a top school with top grades.
[/QUOTE]

Already, msmith537, you are wrong. In the history of my high school exactly one person got in to a “top school” (and, it being Stanford, just barely one). This is in 30 someodd years of history. Each year had a valedictorian and saludictorian. These valedictorians and saludictorians were inevitably ultra-ultra-high achievers (and their families were instantly recognizable as ones that put a huge emphasis on education). They spent their childhood doing drills, their teen years leading academic decatholon and mathleets and captaining the vollyball team for variety. They were just like the high achievers in any other school.

Except, of course, that in other schools the high achievers go to Ivy Leagues. A 4.00 from Cordova High School is not the same as a 4.00 at say, the school my boyfriend went to where Stanford was considered a “backup school” and the occassional slacker with a 3.5 went there.

Tell me, was Cordova High somehow disporportionately full of slackers to the point that even the valedictorians were slackers? Was the nicer, richer school down the street full of harder workers, considering they got in to more top schools?

Have you ever considered that maybe your experiences arn’t universal?

28

[QUOTE=Trunk]
msmith did not say “having support from the right people”. What he was talking about is the kind of support from people that is EARNED, through hard work, talent, and the effort of making connections.

I don’t know what you’re going through. . .but if this thread and your other one on self-help are any indication, it sounds like you’re a little frustrated with how things are going.

Dangerosa wrote: hard work, talent, and luck" and you want to toss in “having support from the right people”.

I guarantee that if you have enough of the hard work and talent, you don’t need “luck” and you’ll end up EARNING support from the right people. And I don’t mean mommy and daddy getting you a job. I mean your college advisor putting in a word for you with his friend at XYZ, Inc. Or your current boss seeing your talent and hard work and rewarding it with promotion and raises. Or your hard work and talent actually evinced in your small business.

What’s your story? Do you have a degree in a field that is in high demand? Did you impress your professors? Do you impress your boss? Have you TRIED starting a business? Have you expanded your horizons, interest-wise or geographically?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know…

It depends on the “respecter” and the “respectee”. An example, I’ve seen very ambitious people intimidate the hell out of others, as a result other people try to do everything in their power to block the ambitious person’s success.

I’m not that much of a believer in luck either. But, I do think it is a factor, small but somewhat significant. Don’t count on it, but hope for it.

What’s my story? The details don’t matter. All I have to say is that I just overcame a HUGE problem, if not crisis (and not the quarterlife crisis!), that I gone through blood, sweat, and tears to solve for MOST of my life! No matter how hard I worked and how hard I tried, I could not solve it. I tried to keep a positive attitude and stay optimistic. In fact, the harder I worked and the more optimistic I was, the worse things got. Actually it would not be accurate to say it was “one problem”, it was many problems, traced to a couple of underlying problems. Had I just kept on working harder on those many problems, and not working smarter on those few main problems, I would have not made any progress.

29

msmith537, I disagree with your description of “hard work.” I’m not saying that what you’ve described isn’t hard work, but just working hard at your job is also hard work. Not all of us (in fact many of us) aren’t interested in climbing the corporate ladder or putting our energy into presenting ourselves as bright, shiny MBAs who have all the political crap down - networking, kissing the boss’s ass, etc.

Your idea of succeeding seems to be a consulting gig pulling down big bucks as much by virtue of who you know and what your background is as whether you’re actually contributing much. And don’t get me wrong; that’s hard work, or at least it would be for me. My idea of success is doing well technically, making enough to live comfortably (by which I mean upper five figures) and retire comfortably (by which I mean > $30K a year total, NOT a retirement property in Bermuda and looking out for constant tax breaks). While nothing you’ve suggested would do me any harm, it also wouldn’t do me much good.

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Look, if you guys really were that hardworking (and smart), you would have graduated from a top school with top grades, several summers of relevent internships and maybe even some extracurricular activities. You would be in a highly competitive job with the best and the brightest in the industry. You would be starting your own businesses or working as some kind of independent consultant. You would be networking with your boss and with people in the industry to keep abreast of opportunities both internal and external.

[/QUOTE]

You also assume an incredible amount of good fortune with your initial premises of what you consider would be the results of anyone’s hard work. It must be nice to be so naive that you really think that’s how everyone is in a position to be.

Do you have any idea how many kids with superb grades and test scores don’t get into top-notch schools? Or the fact that, even with financial aid, a fair number are unable to afford such schools? (Oh, and btw, that wouldn’t have anything to do with the steady cuts in financial aid that have been in progress for quite some time, would it?) How many are born into families and cultures where education just isn’t a priority (or even noticed)? How well do you think the kid who, at the age of say, 14, wakes up and realizes that education is the key to getting out, is going to do? S/he doesn’t have the preliminaries to get great grades, and the chances of really catching up, let alone excelling, are slim no matter how hard the kid works.

How about the kid who busts his ass, but just isn’t that bright, and didn’t have Daddy paving the way for him/her? Does that mean he didn’t work hard? So waitresses and construction workers never work hard? You must be kidding!

How about the kid who busts his ass and is quite bright, but also has to work a near full time job, because Mummy and Dads (if they exist) can’t or won’t help them go to school?

Skating lessons because you had a whim to play hockey? Oh, Christ, just how many families in real real land do you think have that kind of money to throw around?!

Those are just a few examples of how your description of the result of hard work is based on the absurd premise that everyone in society is at least middle to upper-middle class. Oddly enough, they’re not, although I’m sure you’d prefer to pretend that it’s so. It makes patting yourself on the back so much easier when you don’t have to consider just how incredibly lucky you were. :rolleyes:

30

I consider support to be an effect of luck, hard work and/or talent. If you’ve earned it, that support is an effect of your hard work. If you have that support because Daddy’s last name is Hilton, that’s luck. If someone sees some amateur work you’ve done and supports you in becoming a professional whatever, that’s an effect of talent (two talents, having the talent in whatever it was, and being talented enough a social skills not to blow it). The root cause is still hard work, talent or luck.

There is a fourth thing that I missed - which is desire. I never applied to a top school or an internship. Maybe I would have been willing to work that hard, maybe I would have been that smart - I’ll never know. Just because you are smart and hardworking, does not mean Princeton comes knocking on your door to recruit you…you actually need to say “gee, I WANT to apply to a top school.”

Luck is huge. Imagine you were born in Kosovo. Would you be where you are today? The fact that you were born here and now is luck. There are millions of people on the planet who probably are just as talented as you, just as hardworking, but were born into families in places where they can’t use their talents and their hard work goes to subsistance living. Nearly everything I am today - my career, my employer, my friends, my husband and kids - are the result of having a conversation in tenth grade in the hallway of a high school speech meet. That person became a good friend, introduced me to his friends (one of whom is my husband - though that was a delay of ten plus years), they set me up with jobs which lead to other jobs. Maybe I’d be just as “successful” (or more so) without that conversation, who knows? But I’d sure as hell be somewhere different.

31

[QUOTE=F. U. Shakespeare]
Growing up, we’re often told two seemingly contradictory things:

  1. Do something marketable; and
  2. Do something you love.

It was a major discovery when I realized that you have to balance these – find things you like that are somewhat marketable.

[/QUOTE]

Hmm. In my family, it was “find something marketable that you somewhat like.”

32

I think that too many people are not really sure what the definition of “hard work” is, at least in the context of the cliche. It doesn’t mean make a simple five minute job painful and protracted. It doesn’t mean that instead of staying inside to work on your Java or whatever , that you instead run outside and grab a shovel in 100 degree weather! It means to apply diligence and effort, making sure that more effort goes into the job than goes into your own agenda while on the job, i.e., if you have to mop the floor, don’t spend those moments chatting with the hot secretary, or hanging around the water cooler.
Working hard does pay off, substantially. Everybody and their dog can work smart. That’s just the problem. One thousand out of one thousand people can fit a round peg into a round hole. And 999 of that 1000 are still looking for the employer that will offer them a job doing that. And if there was a job for it, the pay would be very, very low, per the law of supply and demand. Everybody is looking for a job where they ‘work smart’ and they lose out to the people that ‘work hard’ because the hard workers are smart enough to realize that employers don’t hire people that can think. They hire people that produce.
hh

33

  • Work hard and people will always expect it from you.

  • Work hard and there will always be rich lazy bastards willing to exploit that hard work.

  • Work hard and get too old to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

  • Work hard and die young without having any fun.

34

You know, I live in the world capital of hard work right now, and I see the repercussions of that outlook. They actually coined a term for terminal overwork: karôshi. The Japanese work hard, but their efficiency is terrible. Last year, I remember seeing someone on this board cite international economic efficiency rates, calculated by (goods produced) / (worker hours). The US didn’t look that great, but Japan was worse. And that’s from using the official figures.

If you look at the official government stats, it shows that they work an average of about 44 hours a week, basically the same as the US. The reality is that a few to several hours of illegally unpaid daily overtime is required in most companies or you might find yourself ostracized and eventually fired. My girlfriend, whose most recent office job was as a part-time contract worker, was told that she was required be at the office for an hour and a half past her official quitting time every day or face termination. At least she was actually paid for her time, unlike many salaried workers. The time conflict with prior commitments eventually got to be too much and she quit the job. She spent 3 years overseas, is very internationalized, and is planning to marry a gaijin. She’s not a typical Japanese person. If she were, she would have stayed at the job and been miserable. She would also have lost the opportunity to do what she’s doing now since her current job is teaching Flamenco, and that part-time job was conflicting with her lessons.

Sure, Japan’s economy is number 2 or 3 in the world (depending on whether you count the EU as one economy) but stress-related disorders are practically normal, and are starting to show up in elementary school kids; adult suicide rates are higher than any other industrialized nation; and I know of at least one person whose kids cried when he came home because they didn’t recognize their own father since he was at work practically every waking hour of their lives for years.

Work for the sake of work is not worth it. Hard work may possibly pay off, but luck is ALWAYS a factor. Yes, if you haven’t done the groundwork, an opportunity will almost certainly pass you by. And yes, that groundwork requires preparation and effort. But hard work by itself is practically worthless and if carried too far is actually more harmful than just slacking.

For the record, my work ethic is that when you do a job you bust your ass and you get it done as fast and as well as you possibly can. You never do a job twice; you do it right the first time. That also means that you find the most efficient and best way to do a job so that you can spend your time working on other necessary tasks. That’s my idea of “working smart.” That’s why when I start a job I plow through work that took my predecessor twice the time to do, and when I leave a job they usually have to find two people to replace me.

35

[QUOTE=born too late]

  • Work hard and people will always expect it from you.

  • Work hard and there will always be rich lazy bastards willing to exploit that hard work.

  • Work hard and get too old to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

  • Work hard and die young without having any fun.
    [/QUOTE]

I’d really like to hear stories from people who think like this.

How about. . .

  • Work hard and get into college.

  • Work hard and get noticed by a professor with a friend at a company.

  • Work hard and make yourself indispensible.

  • Work hard and get raises 3% above inflation every year.

  • Work hard to save your money and have a fat wad sitting in your IRAs so you can retire in comfort.

Just why are you people so pessimistic about hard work? I’d like to hear specifics. Because, the examples in my life. . .dad, mom, siblings, uncles, aunts, friends, in-laws. . .they all work hard. None were handed anything on a silver platter (except for what the US hands anyone) and they’re all doing pretty well.

The people I know who aren’t doing well either work hard, but are pretty dumb, or might be smart, but don’t work hard. Or, they have a degree in something like sociology or art – which, if they’re really trying to make their “hard work” pay off, are just disillusioned about how things work.

36

The edited highlights:

Hard work pays the same (on an hourly basis) as just average work, and unless you’re working for yourself, the worst thing you can do is get all your work done early (because then you’ll just get more dumped on top of you, and you’ve tired yourself out prematurely).

Every company (certainly, every one I’ve worked at) has a Wally, who’s been there for years and never gets any work done. There’s no reason you can’t be Wally- doing bugger all and still getting paid for it- provided you’re either sociopathic or lack a conscience, or ideally, both… :smiley:

37

[QUOTE=Oy!]
msmith537, I disagree with your description of “hard work.” I’m not saying that what you’ve described isn’t hard work, but just working hard at your job is also hard work. Not all of us (in fact many of us) aren’t interested in climbing the corporate ladder or putting our energy into presenting ourselves as bright, shiny MBAs who have all the political crap down - networking, kissing the boss’s ass, etc.
[/quote]

And that is why most people work low to middle income jobs making just enough money to get by, bitching about their boss and resenting people who are successful. I don’t know anyone who got ahead by being lazy. I also don’t know anyone who got ahead by running on their wheel faster than the other hamsters.

[QUOTE=Oy!]

Your idea of succeeding seems to be a consulting gig pulling down big bucks as much by virtue of who you know and what your background is as whether you’re actually contributing much. And don’t get me wrong; that’s hard work, or at least it would be for me. My idea of success is doing well technically, making enough to live comfortably (by which I mean upper five figures) and retire comfortably (by which I mean > $30K a year total, NOT a retirement property in Bermuda and looking out for constant tax breaks). While nothing you’ve suggested would do me any harm, it also wouldn’t do me much good.
[/quote]

Well, I have to work. Can’t do much about that. I figure if I have to work, I might as well work at a job that a) pays well b) affords me the opportunity to work with fun, interesting people c) is interesting and d) opens the door for additional opportunities.

[QUOTE=Oy!]

You also assume an incredible amount of good fortune with your initial premises of what you consider would be the results of anyone’s hard work…

Those are just a few examples of how your description of the result of hard work is based on the absurd premise that everyone in society is at least middle to upper-middle class. Oddly enough, they’re not, although I’m sure you’d prefer to pretend that it’s so. It makes patting yourself on the back so much easier when you don’t have to consider just how incredibly lucky you were. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

Here it comes. The “not everyone has the same opportunities” speech. No, not everyone has the same opportunities. But some people who start with nothing manage to scrape together a business. They save and get their sons and cousins and whoever to help run it and maybe eek out a successful living. Others start with nothing and just work some job half assed bitching about the boss as if they were doing him a favor by just showing up and spend all their earnings on alchohol and crap.

I assume most of you come from middle class or better homes. You obviously have access to a computer. And yet I don’t see an attitude of “let me take advantage of these opportunities”. Mostly I see an attitude of “working hard sucks, I’ll just do the bare mimimum to scrape by” combined with “I work hard, how come I can’t get ahead” with a little bit of redefining the meaning of “successful”.

There are a lot if people in this country who weren’t born here.

  • Work hard and people will recognize you as a hard worker

  • Work hard and there will always be someone willing to pay you for your services

  • Work hard and and enjoy the fruits of your labor WHEN you get older which you will ANYWAY regardless of how hard you work.

  • Work hard and earn enough to afford to play hard.

38

[QUOTE=Trunk]
Just why are you people so pessimistic about hard work? I’d like to hear specifics. Because, the examples in my life. . .dad, mom, siblings, uncles, aunts, friends, in-laws. . .they all work hard. None were handed anything on a silver platter (except for what the US hands anyone) and they’re all doing pretty well.

The people I know who aren’t doing well either work hard, but are pretty dumb, or might be smart, but don’t work hard. Or, they have a degree in something like sociology or art – which, if they’re really trying to make their “hard work” pay off, are just disillusioned about how things work.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not necessarily pessimistic about hard work. I just think it is overrated. Hard work for the sake of hard work can use up valuable time and energy. And, again, hard work alone won’t promise you success. Hard work is only a good thing when it gets you somewhere and somewhere far.

39

I see it as sort of like a Casino. Your choices as to working are like your choices of what to bet on.

You can be a lazybones and sit in front of a slot machine, and get the worst expected payoff.

You can be somewhat more involved and clever, and bet on Craps, which gives some of the best odds in the house.

You can work hard on your skills and go for Poker, where it’s you against other players, not straight up against the house.

You can take the risky way and count cards in Blackjack, potentially excellent payoff, but you still risk losing and getting kicked out.

Working hard, working smart, having a drive to succeed is the equivalent to picking a better game to play than the Slots. Still no guarantee you will win, but your odds are definitely better. Of course, if you hate Craps but love Roulette, play the game you enjoy, just don’t piss and moan about how the Craps players are getting better odds than you.

40

[QUOTE=Trunk]
You might be right, but for the purposes of this discussion, don’t you think that what he wrote is what the OP is getting at?

I don’t think the OP is talking about “success” in terms of “I live alone in one room apartment with a spartan existence, but I have arrived spiritually and evolved beyond material desires.”
[/QUOTE]

You’re taking my comment as if I’m siding with the OP’s hard work cynicism when it only makes sense if I don’t. I was just taking issue with msmith537 accusatory finger pointed towards those who aren’t interested in his myopic, yet oft idolated, life path. As for your annoyingly extreme alternate path, it would even take hard work to achieve that point. I don’t think it’s easy to be a monk. I couldn’t be offended if I was ambivalent about the power of hard work.