Overwork culture is thriving; we think of long hours and constant exhaustion as a marker of success. Given what we know about burnout, why do we do give in?
One of the better articles on this topic - see link here: Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork? - BBC Worklife
New studies show that workers around the world are putting in an average of 9.2 hours of unpaid overtime per week – up from 7.3 hours just a year ago. Co-working spaces are filled with posters urging us to "rise and grind" or "hustle harder". Billionaire tech entrepreneurs advocate sacrificing sleep so that people can "change the world". And since the pandemic hit, our work weeks have gotten longer; we send emails and Slack messages at midnight as boundaries between our personal and professional lives dissolve.
In spirit, we're not so far from the Gekko years as we think. Yet, one thing is different: we understand far more about the consequences of overwork, and the toll burnout can take on our mental and physical health. Given how entrenched our admiration for high-stress work culture is, however, halting our overwork obsession will require cultural change. Could the post-pandemic world be our chance to try?
But millions of us overwork because somehow we think it’s exciting – a status symbol that puts us on the path to success, whether we define that by wealth or an Instagram post that makes it seem like we're living a dream life with a dream job. Romanticisation of work seems to be an especially common practise among "knowledge workers" in the middle and upper classes. In 2014, the New Yorker called this devotion to overwork "a cult".
"We glorify the lifestyle, and the lifestyle is: you breathe something, you sleep with something, you wake up and work on it all day long, then you go to sleep," says Anat Lechner, clinical associate professor of management at New York University. "Again and again and again."
n the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, workaholics started to be identified not by blazers but rather hoodies, as tech start-ups grew into giants like Google and Facebook, and power shifted to Silicon Valley.
Society started to glorify the entrepreneurs who said they wanted to change the world, and told us how they structured their (very long) days for maximum greatness. Maitlis highlights a motivational shift between the Gordon Gekkos and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world; the latter felt they were fueled by “passion for the product or service, or for a higher purpose"
While a lot of burnout "culture came from Wall Street", she says, it's even worse now, because we put tech entrepreneurs who barely sleep on a pedestal. (Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2018 that when it came to his companies, "there are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week".)
The future
Yet even though we’re working harder than ever, and young workers are faced with a potentially toxic combination of greater financial pressures (student debt, combined with lower salaries and higher house prices), pressure to find ‘their passion’ and pressure to find a stable job in an increasingly insecure job market, there may be some small signs of change.
In March, a mock employee survey by 13 first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs found its way into the public eye. Respondents said they averaged 95-hour workweeks and slept five hours a night. "This is beyond the level of 'hard-working', this is inhumane/abuse," said one respondent to the survey, which the BBC has seen. Elsewhere, on TikTok, Gen Z users have been open about mental health struggles, and built communities discussing depression, panic attacks and burnout openly.
And at the end of the day, companies want to make money. "We dehumanised the workplace a long time ago, and I'm not saying it with any pride," says Lechner. For many companies, it's still: "If you don't work, then someone else will come along and do it. And if that's not gonna help, we'll allocate it to the AI. And if the AI takes over, we'll put together a gig workforce." Overwork, or get left behind.
That's why she does not believe burnout will be solved anytime in the near future. "It's not necessarily a message people like to hear. They think they enter a relationship with an employer where the relationship says, 'I work hard, you take care of me'. Again, this is a 20th Century mindset."
We're at a crossroads: we can prioritise our wellbeing, or prioritise sending an email at 0300 because it'll impress the boss. Letting people work from home can only go so far in easing the burden – it has to be up to the workers to stop making burnout somehow desirable, and up to the companies to stop making the workers feel like they should.
Good ass article. It’s toxic seniors and hardos who glorify overwork and think assigning a fast after 6pm is a good idea who actually make it fucking ridiculous and miserable for the rest of us.
Well there's something to be said that the people who outlast or strategically outplay individuals probably do work a little harder than those that don't climb the ranks. Thus it kind of rolls down the ladder. One senior grinded hard and now expects the next group to grind hard. Which is IMO fine but, They should also be fine with some people not wanting to grind. If this is the case then the people who do not want to grind should, not complain when they get passed up for promotion/labeled as lower bucket.
Bump... how does nobody have more to say on this
Because no one is holding you hostage in your glass house. People have worked long hours since the beginning of time, and have done it for far less benefits than those doing it today. What is worse, spending 16 hours a day out on the farm doing manual labor or sitting in front of a computer and responding to an email.
No one is responding because the majority of people on this forum are motivated by something that causes them to be willing to make the tradeoffs mentioned by OP. They could go work in a BO role, or at an art gallery, or any number of other jobs.... would they have the same purchasing power? Definitely not. But the moral is that no one is forced to do anything. This country would be in a lot better of a place if people took personal responsibility instead of always looking for a person or "system" to blame.
Edit: Isn't it hilarious all the MS being thrown but not one rebuttal. Sounds like a lot of people just don't like the truth.
Too busy being “overworked” to properly respond. We all have one fucking life to live though - why would you waste the majority of it behind a desk doing dumb shit on a monitor when you could have less work that’s more fulfilling and also make $ at the same time? At a point, the incremental amount of money in banking compared to other good tech, Corp fin, AM jobs is negligible because you have 0 life in banking and can’t enjoy the money. Stop with your archaic thinking that being a hardo w a shit life means you’re successful. This is why banking as an industry will fail and in a few years the brightest kids will be more attracted to tech, consulting, etc roles that at least have somewhat of a better WLB.
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