Yesterday’s Oldie talked about one of the biggest lies perpetrated on an already vulnerable Millennial audience — relentless striving 24/7.
It’s a great article — equal parts enlightening and alarming.
Welcome to hustle culture. It is obsessed with striving, relentlessly positive, devoid of humor, and — once you notice it — impossible to escape.
According to Erin Griffith (@eringriffith), writing in the New York Times, the biggest drivers perpetuating the scam do so to line their own pocket.
“The vast majority of people beating the drums of hustle-mania are not the people doing the actual work. They’re the managers, financiers and owners,” said David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder of Basecamp.
In 2016 Marissa Mayer, of Yahoo infamy, claimed a person could work 130 hours a week was possible “if you’re strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom.”
Many companies extoll the approach and incorporate it into their culture, but WeWork has gone further and built its business around it and is a good example of how this philosophy in action looks more like a cult than a culture.
It has exported its brand of performative workaholism to 27 countries, with 400,000 tenants, including workers from 30 percent of the Global Fortune 500.
But it took Gary Vaynerchuk, the patron saint of hustling and founder of One37pm to “glorify ambition not as a means to an end, but as a lifestyle.”
It’s a lifestyle that has made a fetish of convenience, not for the sake of a better, more well-rounded life, but as a way to free up more time to work.
Finally, without doubt, it can be stated that hustle is a culture with no redeeming features. It sucks humanity from its followers, then uses up and destroys the most devout.
I’ve made my own hiring errors, as have we all (anyone who claims otherwise is lying).
So when interviewing, we have a few company-wide mantras (for lack of a better term) to guide us.
I find this one goes a long way to ensuring we don’t get caught up in people’s past, rather, it helps us focus on attitude and potential.
“The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.” — John Wooden, basketball player and coach
Look at all the people who were stars at places like Goldman Sachs or Google, such as Marissa Meyer, or GE’s Bob Nardelli (who nearly destroyed Home Depot), who were unable to maintain their level of performance outside the culture, systems and management of that specific company.
That’s why it’s always dangerous to hire stars — more than anything else they are a product of their environment.
Have you noticed that Uber-frenzy has eased off? It’s a nice change to see other lead stories taking its place.
The most valuable private company in the world is definitely at a crossroads.
There is one thing that’s definite and that is that without new leadership that can staunch the blizzard resignation at all levels, galvanize the troops, lead the change to a radically new culture, and keep all the wheels turning in sync Uber easily could fall from its vaunted position.
In short, the new CEO needs to be someone with a sterling reputation, a string of high profile successes, and a believable visionary who people will trust.
“I count Travis as one of my friends. I think he’s a phenomenal leader — Uber is ridiculously interesting.”
Mayer, who may be campaigning for the Uber CEO role, added: “I just don’t think he knew. When your company scales that quickly, it’s hard.”
Mayer went on to say that Uber was going through the same kind of thing Google went through when Eric Schmidt was brought on as CEO to help founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
But Mayer is not Eric Schmidt; in fact, her two main qualifications seem to be being female and buddies with Arianna Huffington.
Of course, there’s a long way to go and a number of other names being bandied about.
If she is hired I’m sure the investors will be excited to watch Uber take the same path as Yahoo.
Even after working decades with bosses at all levels, from CEOs to team leaders and first-time supervisors, their ability to make inaccurate, let alone stupid, assumptions based on nothing solid still astounds me.
The smartest/most creative people only attend top tier universities. No they don’t. The wealthiest/most indebted, unless they were on scholarship, attend those schools.
I can spot instantly talent, even with just a casual conversation. No you can’t. What you can spot are people like yourself.
Hiring/poaching top talent always pays off. Not hardly. Consider JC Penny, Bob Nardelli, Marissa Mayer and thousands more at every level and in every field.
Or that a birdbrain, even the smartest, could figure out the eight steps it took to get a reward, with no coaching?
As opposed to the wisdom of crowds, assumptions are more often the bias of crowds.
Yahoo! Inc.’s Marissa Mayer was the country’s highest-paid female CEO. The 39-year-old was awarded $59.1 million in 2014, making her No. 3 among the eight women on the Bloomberg Pay Index…
The problem is, as As Wally Bock succinctly said last year, “We live in a world of microwavable answers and quick fixes” — and bosses see stars as quick fixes,” and Yahoo’s board thought Mayer the star would quickly fix Yahoo.
But in a world where where people want star status in order to brand themselves, boards and bosses would do well to remember that they don’t come with any kind of money-back guarantee — in fact, they more often come with some kind of golden buyout.
Most star performers are a product of the ecosystem in which they perform. Change the management, culture, especially culture, or any other part of that ecosystem and stars may fall.
And never forget that that ecosystem is permeated by that insidious little detail that impacts success and is so often ignored in discussions — the economy.
As everyone knows, Yahoo isn’t Google, so…
A rising star at Google has become a falling star at Yahoo.
And a lesson learned for thinking bosses at any level, especially those responsible for hiring executive and strategic talent — the past is no guarantee of the future.
“Recently, there has been external interest and speculation in a few shifts amidst our management team. The design and changes in Yahoo’s leadership team are the result of careful planning to achieve the necessary skills, passion, and the ability to execute growth in our business.’
The people who weren’t good for Mayer were scooped up by the likes of Facebook, Square, Helix and STX Entertainment — not exactly companies known for hiring passionless castoffs.
The exodus isn’t all that surprising, considering Mayer’s management style and need for control and the fact that in the three years she’s been at Yahoo there has not only been no turnaround, but everything is worse.
Of course, these days CEO all provide reasons for whatever is happening, but only rarely admit to being one of them.
As I said last January, this is what happens when people buy into their own wunderkind status.
But the truly sad thing is the ammunition she has provided to the anti-women-leaders crowd who will use her to prove that, in fact, woman don’t belong in the corner office.
I’ll bet you don’t know as much as you think about what’s really happening when someone screws up. This article from the archives of The New Yorker about implicit and explicit learning and the difference between choking and panic. It’s the kind of information that isn’t used constantly, but will help you understand and solve the really sticky people problems that flare up when someone fails.
“Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct.”
Surprise! It’s the shaping up to be a very tough year; one in which you have the choice between hunkering down, laying off, wimping out and whining about it or grabbing opportunity, taking calculated risks and going for the brass ring. Newspapers are facing a double whammy. They were already under siege before the crash, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a choice—and if they do we all do.
“In truth, all our staff losses are in part an inability of management to identify and pursue new product opportunities, and in part an internal aversion to change.”
Finally, an interview with Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search products and user experience at Google, about innovation, downturns and healthy internal competition.
“The other groups at Google aren’t willing to accept that the only people who get to have fun and be innovative are the product managers and the engineers. It’s innovation envy. So what happens is, the Human Relations department wants to be innovative. They want to build HR policies like no one’s ever had before. Some of these people want to build facilities like no one’s ever had before. The finance team wants to bring the company public in a way that no one ever has before.”
I hope this information helps you lose the fear, sets your eyes on that brass ring, and sparks your own innovative ideas.
The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll miss, but you’ll still be miles ahead of the folks hiding down in their bunker.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Have you noticed that Uber-frenzy has eased off? It’s a nice change to see other lead stories taking its place.
Even after working decades with bosses at all levels, from CEOs to team leaders and first-time supervisors, their ability to make inaccurate, let alone stupid, assumptions based on nothing solid still astounds me.
I’ll bet you don’t know as much as you think about what’s really happening when someone screws up. This article from the archives of The New Yorker about implicit and explicit learning and the difference between choking and panic. It’s the kind of information that isn’t used constantly, but will help you understand and solve the really sticky people problems that flare up when someone fails.
