To Embrace Hustle Culture, or Resist It?

Ah, the age-old question facing most Americans who work for a living.

On one hand, you’ve got the Gary Vees and Codie Sanchezes of the world who insist that hustle is the only way—the way, the truth, and the light in building a life of passion and cash-flowing assets. If you’re not willing to work hard, then why do you deserve anything, you lazy piece of shit?!

Right?

And on the other hand, you’ve got the growing resistance to hustle culture—people who insist via forums like the subreddit r/antiwork that “unemployment should be for all, not just the rich.” 

The faces of the “anti work” movement are—unsurprisingly, and characteristically for Reddit—more anonymous in their beliefs than the outspoken proponents of hustle culture.

And honestly, I waver pretty dramatically between the two camps: 

On the one hand, I find Gary Vee rhetoric to be inspiring. He’s dropped gems like:

“Learn the work ethic and skills that match your ambition.”

“Without hustle, your talent will only get you so far.”

“Ideas are nothing. Execution is the game.”

I mean, shit. I’m lacing up my bootstraps and ready to lift, baby! I’m a lean, mean, earning machine, and I’m ready to execute™. This brand of radical accountability (“Your legacy is being written by you—make the right decisions,”) is empowering, in a weird way, because it suggests that you’re the only one that’s in control of your outcomes. 

Kinda makes you wanna take black-and-white pensive photos of yourself and layer inspirational quotes on top of them, no?

(Whether or not that’s actually true is another story, but from a motivation standpoint, it carries some weight.)

Codie is a little less sugary with her takes:

“If you do what the average person does, you’ll be average.”

“Most people only have one income because building cash flow is hard. Do the hard thing instead.”

And, my personal favorite: “Contrarian opinion: [Anytime something starts with contrarian opinion, you know you’re in for it.] There’s no such thing as being “underpaid.” The money you make = the value you deliver + how replaceable you are + your negotiation ability. If you’re not satisfied, it’s on you to change those 3 things.”

Again, it all sounds a little harsh, but… are either of them really wrong? 

Hustle culture isn’t a one-size-fits-all methodology

This is the hard part: The more I learn about the economic reality of a lot of Americans (44% of Americans are considered low wage workers, a number that I find staggeringly high, with median annual wages of $18,000), the more I, too, feel inclined to push back on the hustle culture mentality on their behalf. 

From the same article:

“Most of the 53 million Americans working in low-wage jobs are adults in their prime working years, or between about 25 to 54, they noted. Their median hourly wage is $10.22 per hour — that’s above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour but well below what’s considered the living wage for many regions.

Even though the economy is adding more jobs, there’s increasing evidence that many of those new positions don’t offer the kind of wages and benefits required to get ahead. A new measure called the Job Quality Index recently found there is now a growing number of low-paying jobs relative to employment with above-average pay.” 

(This is the part where I try to square ambitious, content-creating entrepreneurs who insist your life sucks because you suck with this economic data that suggests many jobs simply don’t offer the compensation necessary to have a chance at improving your situation.)

The bootstrap answer, of course, would be to tell those 53 million Americans to “get off their asses and work,” but that seems to be the issue: These people are working. 

Should they work more? Should they be paid more? Should they take out a bunch of loans to live on so they can go back to school and get educated and maybe get a better job? Should we automate these jobs and free them up to do something that does pay more? 

(Because I’d assume these 53 million people are doing jobs that local economies need to function, like servers, cooks, wait staff, cashiers, etc.—if all 53 million of them strapped up their boots and dipped, certainly things would start to fall apart a little. That’s my main criticism of the bootstrap mentality for all. It ignores the glaring reality that that shit does not work at scale because society needs these types of workers to function properly.)

I don’t know what the answer is. 

But what I do know is that I’m willing to push back on hustle culture jargon on behalf of these people. While the data wouldn’t suggest that most of them are working multiple jobs (fewer than 10% of Americans have two or more jobs), they are working. And if you’ve ever worked a service industry job for more than 30 minutes, you know that shit is hard. 

It’s a globally recognized trope that Americans are obsessed with work (‘live to work’) while our rich European counterparts ‘work to live.’ (The irony here is that Americans are also assumed generally fat, dumb, and lazy by other parts of the world, so I’m not sure. Which is it, guys? Are we obsessed with work, or fat and lazy?)

The case for embracing a certain brand of hustle culture

Where I draw the line in the sand may surprise you, and it might also sound reminiscent of an old, widely flamed Financial Samurai article entitled, “Are There Really People Who Work Fewer Than 40 Hours Per Week and Complain They Can’t Get Ahead?”

The people who I’m not willing to give a pass to? People like me.

I grew up in middle class middle America with two educated parents who sent me to private school and encouraged me to work hard with both emotional and financial incentives. 

I had no student loan debt and got a full-time job less than a year after graduating from college that paid $52,000 per year. I was able-bodied and (I think) a relatively competent person.

I worked regular hours (8-5), five days a week, and the expectations levied on me at work weren’t extreme or unreasonable. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to work late or work on a weekend in the four years I worked for that company. 

In short, someone like me has no room to complain that she can’t get ahead, because she’s being paid fairly to do a reasonable amount of work and has plenty of free time to expand those working hours and earn more doing something else if she wants to. 

This is where, I think, the Big Girl Accountability rubber has to meet the road and an assessment of values and goals has to take place. 

If I’m salty that my average job with average pay isn’t enabling me to live a lavish lifestyle, that’s on me—I don’t deserve to live a fancy lifestyle if I’m only willing to work for (realistically) fewer than 40 hours per week doing a job where my performance is ultimately replaceable. 

Make no mistake: I deserve to have a roof over my head, food to eat, access to healthcare, and mental health breaks when necessary—in my opinion, those things are just Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs-ass human rights, and I hate that even being able to see a doctor in a timely fashion is a conversation that involves acknowledging privilege in America. The fact that these things are considered privileges in the richest country on planet earth is unjustifiable.

But do I deserve to go to bottomless brunch every Sunday? To wear designer clothes? To live in a luxury high rise apartment? To become a multimillionaire? Uh, no—I don’t deserve any of that stuff, unless I want to work for that stuff. 

And that is precisely where I think hustle culture serves a useful purpose: To light a fire under your ass and remind you that nobody’s going to do it for you. The DM that—to this day—sticks with me the most? 

“Maybe we, as Americans, have a warped sense of the type of lifestyle we deserve.”

The same advice that’s totally appropriate and applicable to a 24-year-old guy with a college degree making a high five-figure income working 40 hours per week in a climate-controlled office is not appropriate and applicable for the 40-year-old single mom working two restaurant jobs to feed her kids and keep them in partially subsidized housing. 

Telling that dude with a white collar gig to “just work harder” if he wants to earn more is valid. 

Telling that same thing to the single mom is just insulting.

The trouble with hustle’s “moral superiority”

And it’s worth reiterating that someone shouldn’t have to engage in hustle culture if they’re content with their salary and lifestyle. Being a “hustler” doesn’t make you morally superior, though most of the rhetoric would suggest otherwise (thanks for that, Protestant work ethic). 

Working 40 hours per week for $52,000 per year is great if you’re happy about the results. We shouldn’t assign a moral high ground to “hustle” and I’m certainly not trying to imply that hustling should be necessary to meet your basic needs. 

…just that if you want to live the high life, you should probably expect to do a little more than that.

After all, as Financial Samurai points out in his controversial post about Americans working less than we think, the US Census Bureau reports that the average hours worked by Americans are actually going down.

I talked on the podcast a few months ago about how the obsession with financial independence in America is a cry for help; in that podcast, I discussed the way in which people are working less because work is getting more demoralizing. I still think that’s true. 

But demonizing working harder (rather than acknowledging that, for some, it really is the answer to earning more and progressing faster) misses the point: Some people need true economic intervention and higher wages (approximately 53 million of them). 

Others—who want to earn $200,000/year and live the high life—are probably better candidates for introducing a little elbow grease to the equation and making some savvy business decisions. 

This is your brain on Late Stage Capitalism.