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

In My Humble Opinion
61

I think the even bigger ambiguity is the definition of “get ahead.” To msmith357, the concept of getting ahead is completely different from what it is to me; to me, getting ahead is making enough to live comfortably, and preferably some job security. Hard work is definitely a serious element in achieving these things (although not the only element).

msmith357’s concept of getting ahead is so alien to me, so utterly repugnant, that I have trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that there really are people out there who not only want it, but think it’s a *good thing * to want it. There hard work is necessary, but less in the area of what you’ve been hired to do, and more in the area of building your “base,” if you will - a group of people who ‘matter’ and who consider you to be a bright, eager, and hardworking person who is an excellent candidate for the next (preferably higher) job. This is utterly necessary to excell in his area, and it’s impressive that he is doing it in that I would find it extremely difficult.

My environment is not that of a university, but my step-mom and several good friends are professors, and I am very aware of just how political it can be. But it’s different, although certainly not nicer. There is some career building and some empire building, but that’s more predicated on the personality of the individual, rather than a necessity within that environment. Their politics are far more a matter of two things: what is the best approach the department should be taking to thus and so issue, and pure personal vanity/spite/friendship. They have tenure, so they don’t need the job protection, and there’s usually a pretty well-defined career ladder in terms of pay and “rank,” so there usually isn’t the need for the kind of working the crowd skills needed in the financial fields. Much as I would dislike this environment, it would certainly suit me better than the financial fields.

So for me, “getting ahead” is very different from what constitutes “getting ahead” for others.

That being said, I think that hard work, while not 100% essential to success (there are always people who luck out), certainly improves the odds regardless of what your definition is. The differences are into what the hard work goes.

By the way, the luck thing? People like smith make a lot of their luck. there are never guarantees, but setting up optimal conditions for succeeding is certainly the way to bet. And make no mistake; guys like him work at it. They work at being liked, they work at being perceived as the right guy for the job. That to some extent involves doing the job well, but more on manipulating the perceptions, and it’s damned hard work. And when guys like that succeed, it’s less because they were “lucky” than that they worked bloody hard to make sure the odds were in their favor.

This of course does not negate the advantages of being born the nephew of the CEO. Some things really *are * luck.

62

It doesn’t work that way here either. In broad terms, with certain exceptions in specific fields, “I didn’t get into a good school” is an excuse trotted out by people who are pissing and moaning about how other people are doing better than they are while completely ignoring the fact that, for the most part, those people getting ahead are the ones working hard instead of bitching all day long.

63

I’m not sure why you find it repugnant or how it is different from what you described. I work hard so that I can maintain a comfortible lifestyle. I don’t live particularly extravigantly. I like living in a trendy neighborhood, dressing sharply, eating in nice restaurants and occassionally clubbing or bar hopping but other than that I tend to be somewhat thrifty. Not coming from money (at least not enough money to live without working) I have to maintain a job. I figure I might as well try to work at the most interesting, high paying jobs I can and be as successful at it as I can.

The thing is, no one owes you a living. I see my “job” as making myself valuable to my company so they want to keep me. That sometimes means doing bullshit I hate. Sometimes it means doing stuff outside of my job description.

64

No insult to you intended. I just meant it would not be my choice of success, and your idea of what you consider interesting or what you’d be willing to do to get and sustain it or even what it would take for you to consider it high-paying are completely different from mine. As for our ideas of living comfortably or being somewhat thrifty? Well, let’s just say they have pretty much no overlap except that I dress “better” (in the sense of more formally or nicely) than anyone else in the office (and probably for less money!), simply because I find suits and skirts as comfortable as jeans, and they look one hell of a lot better on me! The only thing trendy about me (and I’m not sure that it is) is that I have naturally quite blonde hair. The prices you would pay at a “nice” restaurant would probably make me so ill that I couldn’t enjoy dinner, and as for clubbing or bar-hopping, I’d pay to be excused!

Almost everyone’s job involves some things that aren’t in the job description. But I suspect there are not many fields in which your job and certainly your progress depend on being a player more than yours or less than mine. There is simply not enough money your field could offer to make it worth it to me.

I live better than 3/4 of the rest of the US, maybe more. That’s plenty for me. :slight_smile:

65

When I worked as a contractor at IBM I was assigned a job and of course copied everything my prececessor did. After a few weeks I realized that a few macros (yes, I was doing computer work) would cut the time for my tasks by almost 1/2.
Did this, showed my co-worker how to do this, and things really got buzzing.
In return, they laid off one worker and gave me her job also. Then as I got more and more efficent they gave me more and more work to do. This I did gladly.
Then they cut my pay by 33%.
I walked off the job and never contacted them since. No notice.
Fuck them. My reward was a pay cut I couldn’t afford. They were paying me 13$ and hour at the time before the cut!
Is this what one gets when he works smarter?
Thanks for letting me vent.

66

I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with being ambitious and wanting to get ahead in your field. I’m pretty ambitious. I have no delusions that I’ll be CEO, but I certainly plan to move ahead and have done so relatively well so far. If that’s not for you, that’s fine, but why is it repugnant if someone wants to? I want to move ahead because I like feeling that my work is important and seeing my increasing impact on the company. The monetary rewards are nice, but they’re really secondary.

I don’t think it’s necessary to be “a player” as you said nor is it required that you have no interests outside of work. However, it is important that you establish and maintain a good reputation and a professional network.

I’m certainly not obsessed with my job or my industry. However, I do take time to read a couple professional journals, look at what our competitors are doing, and keep abreast of what’s happening in the industry. It doesn’t take up an inordinate amount of time. As mentioned, I have no ambition to be CEO. Rather, I’ll do things like read a trade journal on the train to work rather than a novel (and not even every time at that) and I’ll listen to the market reports on my way home rather than music. If I just slogged away at my job, I’d probably do okay (in that I’d not get fired and get cost of living raises every year), but I’ve been promoted and moved ahead because I was able to say “that program may work for us right now, but our competitors are doing these other things I think would address our future needs a bit better…” Again, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a life outside of work, but you do need to do some reading and studying outside of working hours.

In addition, I make sure to attend a seminar or two each year to learn about new trends in my area and keep my professional licenses up to date. Yes, that means travel and less time to get my existing work done, but it’s not a constant thing. It’s just a few late days before and after the seminar and a bit of planning.

Also, I make sure that I’m willing to help out my colleagues when I have knowledge that may help their projects. Taking a couple hours to help out someone who’s struggling with an issue unrelated to my own job does mean there’s a couple hours less to do my own work (and maybe I’ll stay a bit later than planned that night), but it also means that I’m establishing myself as a valuable resource and building good feelings among my coworkers. Those good feelings go a long way when management is asking for feedback prior to my review or thinking of who should be promoted. In addition, there have been times when I’ve dropped the ball because I’ve been distracted or over my head. However, every time someone has helped me get back on track. That doesn’t always happen. I’ve seen them let others fall on their faces. But they know I’d help them in similar situations.

Building and maintaining a network doesn’t mean all your friends have to be someone you can get something out of work wise. It doesn’t even mean that you have to go to the after work happy hours with colleagues (actually, at my age, no one does that anyway—it’s more something those in their 20’s and early 30’s do). I keep in touch with coworkers from prior jobs and those that have moved on from my company. It’s really not all that difficult: just an email or lunch/coffee meeting occasionally. I’ve also joined a few professional organizations. Their demands aren’t all that great. We have a couple meetings every so often and sometimes I serve on committees. Sure, I’d often rather be doing other things, but the time demands don’t take up my entire free time.

It’s true that I can’t work only 9:00 to 5:00 every day and never do career related things in my free time. However, I still have a full life outside of work. Maybe I have a bit less “free time,” but the rewards of having a job that keeps me interested and makes me feel valuable are worth it. Plus, making more money frees up some time. I can afford to have someone cut my grass or have a cleaning service for my house. (And frankly, since I hate doing that stuff, I’d rather be working than cleaning or mowing anyway.)

67

I tried to make it clear that I didn’t view as **msmith357 ** for choosing this, just that I myself would find the choice repugnant. Sorry if I didn’t make it clearer.

68

Er, that would be “didn’t view msmith357 as repugnant”! :smack:

69

Huh? Excuse me? In what universe is Stanford considered barely a top school? According to the Jiao Tong 2005 rankings, it was placed 3rd in the world and 2nd in the US.

Anyway, I view “work hard” as a myth in the anthropological sense. As in it is a story told in order to enforce social mores. In a sense, “work hard” appeals to an innate sense of justice about how the world should work. We instinctively rebel against instances where the work hard maxim breaks down. Look at the anger directed towards Bush for his percieved easy road to power due to his father or Halliburton for their no-bid contracts or even just your neighbour running some sort of scam that results in a disproportionate amount of benifit for the amount of work. Many of the stories in this thread are similar. We want to believe that our efforts will be rewarded and that some impartial arbiter is looking down and fairly judging the merits of our work and we get pissed off when that doesn’t happen.

But does it reflect reality? I would say no more than any other myth. But it represents an ideal, a goal to be moving towards. And as such, it serves it’s purpose.

70

The problem is, in the real world, real employers ARE interested in how much you get done and how quickly. Yes, it’s true, not for the Ws of the world, but for real people who don’t have Daddy paving the way (which is the HUGE majority of us). Very few of us are in a position where it doesn’t matter; especially in these days of employers increasingly expecting more work from fewer people. Blowing this off as a myth meant to reinforce societal mores (which I don’t deny is the case) is a good way of finding yourself without a job, particularly if you are comparatively inexperienced and/or comparatively new at a company. You can usually BS or charm your way through it for a while, but there’s a very, very good chance it will be noticed and noted, and eventually acted on. Why should they pay a slacker when they can get someone else who’ll bust butt? There are plenty of people out there who don’t seem to mind being industrious in the least.

And if you’re starting your own business? Well, unless you have Daddy basically subsidizing the hell out of you, you’d better be prepared to work like a dog! Inheriting one is a different story, but starting any business entails a LOT of work.

Thus a fair amount of hard work isn’t so much necessary to get ahead as to stay at least where you are. Don’t use cynicism as an excuse to screw yourself out of a job!

71

Well, in a poor Sacramento high school, apparently. Maybe it’s a proximity thing, but Stanford never had the same mystique of the Ivy Leagues to me and my peers.

72

Anything in my neighborhood must not be good? Stanford is quite good. It ranks just below Harvard, Yale and Princeton in the U.S. News and World Reports College rankings - and is usually the top non-East Coast and non-Ivy league school to get listed in rankings. Its business school in particular is considered top notch. If you want to go to a school based just on rankings, Stanford would be preferable to Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth or MIT (by the U.S. News rankings). So it only makes the top rankings “barely” if you are limiting top to say 5.

73

It is a side effect of the protestant work ethic and of a time when all labor was done by hand. A hundred and fifty years ago when work involved manual labor and nothing else a hard worker could accomplish what two lazy workers could do. Now that we have an information economy that is no longer the case but social rules take a while to catch up to reality.

74

That couldn’t be more true. I have to strongly disagree with Scott Adams that working smarter has nothing to do with arbitrarily making oneself more intelligent or spending more time on the job.

I learned this when I was doing the traffic studies for TC, MI. Faced with dodging cars on a four-way intersection, hammering the rubber hoses across the roads, trying to figure out how to get maximal information out of the labor—and more importantly, risk—which was a hopeless task. After being too lazy for words and sitting to figure the problem out rather than doing any actual work, I realized that if I sat down and thought the problem out in advance, it made the job far, far easier.

In my experience, working smarter means taking time to think about one’s strategy in advance rather than just going in to “git 'er dun.” The problem is that thinking things through before hand, and stopping along the way to re-group and plan based on evolving events feels like acute laziness. (It’s the same feeling I get when I try to do professional reading at work. If I’m working, I shouldn’t be reading!)

I think a big part of working smarter is being really lazy. When faced with a task, the lazy guy or gal thinks “How can I make this as easy to do as possible, giving me maximal slacking opportunity?” Necessity may be the mother of all inventions; however, laziness is the mother of efficiency! :smiley:

75

Well, we never had anyone go to Harvard, Yale, Prinecton, Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth or MIT. “We once had someone get in to Stanford” doesn’t quite have the ring as “A couple kids got in to Harvard this year”. Anyway, it seems like my perceptions are off by the rest of the world (and college rankings are ultimately about perception), and I certainly didn’t get in to Stanford, so all you all from Stanford can just relax. I’m plenty awed by your ranking, but the fact that one girl once from my school got in doesn’t go any farther to convice me that the students at Cordova High School were playing on a level field.

76

In the workplace, social rules often stomp reality right into the dirt. See the case of Jake, who “accomplished” himself into twice as much work at 33% less pay.

77

Going back to the manual labor analogy for a sec. Lets say Jake was hired, along with a few other people, to dig a ditch from X to Y. Jake volunteered to his employer that the ditch only needed to be 1/4 as big to do the job, thus all the ditch diggers, including himself, lost work. Go onto a jobsite and do that, you’re liable to get a pickaxe in the back instead of a pat.

Jake was a contractor, hired this way specifically so that the corporation does not have to guarantee ongoing employment. He was there for a “few weeks” then upturns the apple cart and gets a few people laid off before his own misfortune kicked in.

As much as Jake was clever about his work, he wasn’t smart. IBM was his customer, not his employer. Ultimately, your responsibility is to yourself and your employer, not the customer. You certainly shouldn’t be eliminating the need for your employers services, that’s the opposite of working smart.

That’s like being a commission salesman and telling customers they don’t need product Z. It may be a true statement, but if you offer it up, no fair complaining when they don’t buy your stuff.

78

So not only is the customer always right – the employer is always right. What a ray of enlightenment.

79

That may be true, but I define success as being able to live the lifestyle you choose to live. Not being forced to get by whatever lifestyle life hands you. Not everyone wants to make $200,000 a year. Well, most people wouldn’t mind it, but they don’t want to work 100 hours a week at something they don’t like doing, working every weekend and never having any time to spend with friends or family. They would not consider themselves “successful” because they aren’t living the life they want.